70 cuda front fenders. Does anyone have a weight difference between the two? I know there is different weights of fiberglass, race or street but just need a idea on what each might weigh.

I know my pair of fiberglass fenders for my Road Runner are 28lbs lighter then the pair of steel fenders. Cuda fenders would be fairly close in weight.

28 pounds is quite a difference, I'll have to rethink this option.

I remember when I helped my friend build his ss/a car back in the late 70's we weighed a factory ss fender and it was 18 lbs. a after market was 16lbs. and a steel was 24 lbs. The biggest gain was in the hood.

I never weighed my front end, but I pulled the steel front end off of my 70 Cuda in 1 piece by myself. The fiberglass front end I installed didn't seem much lighter to me. Hood, bumpers, doors were the biggest weight savings. I don't think I would go with glass fenders again.

28 lbs, a lot of work to make them look good for .03 in ET.
Doug

My car didn't have any front fenders when I started the project. EVERYTHING on my project has been more work than it's worth, so why not lose some weight. Lol.

Agreed if the quality and price are reasonably close. I'm watching a friend do glass fenders on a 64 Polara right now. The outer finish is very good. Fitting has required hours of work to clear the stock rocker/sill and make a headlamp fit. He is picky and they'll look great when done. His day job is a prototype show car builder for Ford.
Doug

With all the extra metal structure needed to mount the fiberglass, I wonder if it's a wash between the two or pretty close.

My car picked up and was more consistent when I converted to fiberglass.

Not if done right and the right parts used. This is an extreme example..........but a carbon fiber nose with a titanium tree on a customers 63 Corvette Pro Mod car weighs 11 pounds, TOTAL. That's fenders, hood and tree, COMPLETE front end.

Our gutted steel fenders, glass bumper, factory grille and header panel, with a glass hood and moly tree, weighed 80lbs on our G-body. The Glasstek nose, with hood and moly tree weighs less than 30lbs with the factory grille installed.

Weight is weight. I rarely look at it as "worth" it, because in truth NOTHING is worth it on a race car. But if I can save a pound, I will

my front clip, doors & trunk lid are made from Kevlar. if i could tape them all together i could lift them above my head with 1 hand. they are thicker than glass but they dont flex & they're super light. if you know someone with the molds you might want to consider Kevlar panels.

I never heard of kevlar body panels, maybe I'm living under a rock. LOL I'll look into them. I know one thing for sure , carbon fiber is not in my future.

i live down under & we have a huge boat building industry. Kevlar & carbon are very commonplace down here. i repaired my Kevlar with carbon matting since it costs the same but much stronger. If you have a mold you probably need to talk to a boat builder.

Scary, I was thinking the exact same thing.

Pardon me for saying, but frankly this attitude is why most guys cars are tanks. 28lbs is 28lbs. At this point on our car, I would kill to find 28 easy pounds to get rid of. We hacked our t-top roof off to put a carbon one piece roof on and lost 40 pounds. Work? sure, but it was 40 pounds

Too many say that's "only 5 pounds" that won't matter. Take that approach 10 times and you have piled 50 pounds on your car.

Weight is free horsepower and if you don't have a minimum weight, why not make the car as light as you can. Even if it does, you should still make it light and put the weight where you want it

I agree with you to a point. #1 Is it in the race budget. #2 (and this happend to be a biggie with me) how does it look? I'd love to have nice carbon body pieces. Beyound my budget though. As we all know not every glass piece is real light or looks good.
Doug

The key is to buy nice glass or MAKE it nice. And just because you buy carbon, doesn't make it nice either. Has to do with quality of molds and the layup. Our carbon doors fit like ass, but our body guy cut them apart and made them fit as good as the steel ones. Nothing about glass you can't fix. Now if guys expect to buy glass parts, bolt them on and they fit and look as good as steel without touching them, well yeah, he should probably stick with steel. It will take some work, but to me the weight savings is worth the work

Monte, thanks for your and everyones input. My situation is that I have already have glass fenders, they look good ,but age has taken there toll on them with many cracks/breakouts at the mounting areas top and bottom. All could and probably will be repaired . I was possibly looking for a easy way out with going back to steel fenders. More ridged , less support needed. The car when I bought it was a back half car, now tube chassis which now requires support for the fenders that are not really ready for that. I don't plan to have a one piece take off front so I guess I'll just get some tubing and start making attachment points.

Honestly, having a nice tire to sit on as you service under your rocker covers or intake system is so much better than bending over n reaching down. I have big blocks in both my race car n street car n working on the racecar with the front clip removed is so much better.

I built some glass/carbon farings from scratch for my airplane, 3 plies total, they were strong enough to stand on and when I painted them, they doubled in weight. I also made the molds using glass matt cloth and they fit perfectly because I made them right on the cowling. good luck tim

Same thing on my tube chassis 1970 Cuda with the slide off front end, it has the OEM steel fenders and stock steel upper an lower valances still with aluminum inner fender wells

I've got the aluminum inner fender wells built also, but the way there made to fit they wrap over the front down tubes and captures the front motor plate. No slipping this one off without some major mods.

Reading up on fiberglass repair, doesn't look that hard, just messy. I did some glass work back in the 60's . looked like crap but it patched the hole.