Ray 47wh, I was looking at the pictures of your front fenders, those wheel openings look really big to me (might be the way they appear in the pic), are those off a big truck, like a 1 1/2 ton or something? If they are big truck fenders, you may want to hold off doing much body work to them until you can have a look when the truck is on the Dakota frame. The big trucks had something like 24" wheels and really tall tires. The front edge and the rear edge of the wheel openings were cut more open to accommodate the larger diameter tires when they were turned. The back end of the big truck fenders also hang much lower then the rear edge on a 1/2 ton frame. the Dakota frame tends to lower the body on the frame to begin with, the big truck fenders may actually drag on the ground when the truck is sat on the Dakota chassis.

one of the few advantages of the big truck fenders is you don't have to be as concerned about the wheels being centered in the wheel opening, because you will likely want to add some material to both the front and the rear of the opening. Could make it easier because you can adjust the added on pieces to shift the wheel opening forward or rearward as needed, you can do that while you are dealing with the too low rear end of the fender. Not such a big deal if you still have body work to do yet, but it really sucks if the body was ready for paint.

I've done a few of theses Dakota frame swaps, but on the last one I still had to cut the wheel flair on my 49 Dodge pickup front fenders and move it forward about an inch and a half. If I would have had all the body work done, I would not had been a very happy camper. Pics of the fender flair being moved on my 49 Dodge truck. Gene