I am in the process of installing a set of Parts place inner fender wheel wells. I wanted to do a thread so others would know what to expect from these, and how they look compared to the originals. FYI I had to change my liners as they had holes in them, the plastic had become very brittle and if you touched it, it would literally disintegrate into dust. The passenger side liner is closer in appearance to the OEM liners than the drivers side, but neither is an exact reproduction. There is a missing ledge on both fender liners that is at the bottom of the engine side of the liner, that runs almost the whole side of both liners, this is the easiest way to tell that they are a repro part and not originals.

Repro liner is sitting on top of OEM liner. You can clearly see a "ledge" on the bottom one that is missing on the repro.

Here you can see the missing ledge on the drivers side and also 2 circular raised areas that are not on the repro.

OEM liner you can see some holes on it, and a bunch of what looks like the plastic delaminating. If you touch that plastic it just turns to dust.

Other hole in drivers side liner, close to battery. This does not seem to be caused by battery acid as both liners had the same issue. You touch those holes and the plastic just disintegrates.

Holes for the 4 fender bolts are not there, you will need to drill those.

Manufacturer

Passenger side liner installed photo 1

Passenger side liner installed, photo 2

Passenger liner installed, photo 3


After installation the passenger side liner looks great, the plastic seems just as thick and if not for that missing ledge, it would be an almost perfect reproduction. Some tips for installation:
1- You will need a heat gun, as the reproduction liners are all out of shape when you get them, specifically they will be too narrow. When you try to get them in it will be very difficult to get them over the steel fenders to be able to bolt them onto the fenders. You will need to get them in the car and then start heating them up with a heat gun to be able to push them over the fenders. Without a heat gun it will be extremely difficult.
2- You will need to install them twice. The liners do not have the holes for the fenders drilled out. Do not attempt to use your stock liners as templates to drill out the new ones, as they are not exactly the same, and you may end up with holes that are not in the correct place. Get the liners in the car with the heat gun. After they are in completely in bolt them in. You will need to open up some of the holes that are on the back of the liner, 2 that go to the chassis and one to the footwell, as they are not exactly where they need to be and they are tiny holes compared to the holes on the stock liners anyways. The front holes that go to the radiator support area fit well, but you may need to do some minor massaging there. After you have the liner completely in and where you want it to sit, go and make 4 small holes on the liner for the fender bolts. After I made the 4 holes for the fender bolts, I heated up the liner with the heat gun for a while to hopefully make it conform to shape. I left the thing in there overnight and the next day I took them out and drilled out the 4 fender holes to the correct size. Please be aware that the fender holes on the OEM liners are very big, I drilled my holes quite a bit smaller, to leave more material there so the liner would be stronger. Also the holes on the OEM liner that go to the footwell and chassis are also huge, you can make them much smaller.
3- Installing the fender liner splash guards. As most know the repro splash guards are very thin and do not really resemble the OEM stuff. When you buy the splash guards they come with staples. I am not aware of a stapler that can go through that thick plastic, I am sure that there is one, but I certainly do not have one. So, what I ended up doing was taking the staples and grabbing them with a pair of pliers, and pushing them with the pliers onto the liner so I would get two indentations on the liner. I then drilled 2 small holes, I think I used a .062 drill, and pushed the staples through the liner. I then pushed the splash guard through the staples and used pliers to bend then staples. From the engine side it looks perfect, the wheel side is not perfect but unless you are under the car and behind the wheel you cant see it :-)

Hopefully this helps someone in the future.

 

I had the same experience with the repro 68-69 red inner fenders. I purchased them from Fusick but they had Parts Place stickers on them. I didn't need a heat gun but it took a lot of pushing and pulling. The front core support bolts holes are already in those. They lined up with the fenders ok but had to be stretched a lot to get the front bolts in at the core support. On the driver's side I needed threaded rod to pull them into place.

Also, the openings where the splash shields go weren't even close. I sent pics to Fusick and they sent me a check to give me my money back for the splash shields ( I didn't even ask for it back). The problem isn't the splash shields though, it's the inner fenders. The splash shields lined up with the old inner fenders perfectly. I ended up buy masticated rubber and making my own.

 

I had to do a little stretching on the splash shields to get them to work, one of them still ripped a bit. They do not fit well on the repro liners. Best thing would be to find good original liners, but my issue with that was that mine were disintegrating, and I would imagine that whatever is out there used, that is 50 years old, will probably start disintegrating soon too.

 

I was surprised to see that your fender liners disintegrate like your pictures show. Mine (originals) are in still in good shape w no holes or evidence of disintegrating like that.

i wonder if it was a chemical or heat, sunlight or something else that caused that ?

 

I would imagine that it is heat. The car has been in Florida since at least 2004 when I bought it, and is now in Texas. It has always been in a garage since 2004, but obviously garages get very hot in the summer in south Florida. I was told when I bought it that it was brought down from Michigan. Now, being that the car has all its original floor pans with literally no rust, and the car is 99% rust free I doubt that this car is originally from Michigan. This car was probably in a dry southern state most of its life. The kick panels in the interior did exactly the same thing, they started disintegrating about 5 years ago and I replaced them with reproductions. BTW the reproduction interior kick panels are really nice, they fit perfectly and look great.