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Here is an early production fender, will post the OE wheel lip molding later (they were a hack a$$ bandsaw job).

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Yes the early ones were modified by hand.They look much different.I'm sure someone will post a picture of the "Hemi fender".Later ones were stamped with the cut out for the tire.I don't think they modified the lip mouldings like we did.I guess they figured in the problem arose it would just tear the moulding off.We only had one crew of two people doing them at first then they hired two more guys who were fired after 3 weeks for messing so many up.

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Here is an early production fender, will post the OE wheel lip molding later (they were a hack a$$ bandsaw job).

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Don't think I care for that comment.I worked at Creative and did most of the driver side fenders.Most turned out very nice considering how they decided to do them.I think we did them all until Feb or so when the "Hemi fender" was ready.BTW they all had the wheel lip mouldings. One more piece of info is that all the Challengers had the mouldings removed and should not be on a Challenger.I see lots of restored cars with them.Wrong.Built with them yes,delivered without them.

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Were the fenders modified after final paint?

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Yes the fenders were modified after they were painted.Cars were complete.We drove them in and out of the building and once in a while to get gas for the ones that ran out in the lot.We hand cut the moldings on a bandsaw after marking them with a template.Then we reinstalled the moulding.I guess there must have been cars without mouldings if the fenders were not drilled.It has been a long time.The cars were shipped to dealers or a holding yard after they left Creative.

The tools were very crude that were used and yes some fenders were a bit rough.We used 2 modified welding visegrips to clamp an aluminum template to the fenders,then bent the lips with another pair of modified visegrip welding pliers (had a square piece welded on with a groove machined in them to hold the fender edge).The idea was to bend them flush with the inner fender.Most of the time we did.

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Have you ever considered offering your services to bend some more wheel lips for people? I would imagine someone out there is willing to pay for your expertise.

If you take a 1970 fender and have the lip bent by the same guy who did it way back then, I'd imagine it would be pretty hard to tell the one he did today apart from the one he did 40 years ago. Something to consider for the clone builders and others who've had a hard time finding original hemi fenders.

I've heard of people stamping louvers into 71 barracuda fenders, but so far I haven't heard of anyone offering to bend wheel lips.

Tav

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I don't think I would do my own if I had a fender that needed it.I am not a "body" guy.I do think that with the fender edge roller that Eastwood sells someone could do a much nicer job.It was only one of several of little jobs that we did when I was there.Most were manual labor type repairs to parts that were dimensionally wrong.We also did the T/A and 340-6 six pac hoods (grunt work of sanding and sanding and more sanding).Creative had a Chrysler styling room on site that was off limits to us.I am sure there are much better stories out there about that than what we did.

Funny I have never heard anyone speak about why they did the fender mods.

I only chime in on this to set the record straight as I have heard so many wild stories about the fenders.So if you see an older guy checking your fenders at a car show don't freak out,it just might be me.