Troy's car...

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The original wheel openings varied,some were seam welded together others were folded over at the top radius and some body puddy was smeared over the seam and folded lip.Regardless most were soon modified(especially at the front lower corners for tire clearence.)by the racers.When Chrysler offered the shortened 44" Dana housing for the A body and the plans for the mimitub and Mancini style spring relocation most opted to change to get the large tire on the cars.

i too looked long and hard at the wheel wells of these cars before doing my clone and have been in contact with many of the folks on this blog about this subject (and i didn't do mine "as original"). if you look at the wheel wells of a 68 corenet r/t you will see a close resemblance to the dart wheel wells and i think that is where the shape came from. dick landy had chrome moldings on 1 of his cars and again i'm thinking they were modified r/ts. i also had a well know cc event worker tell me they used a garbage can against the quarter to mark the opening and read 1 mag where the car was a original car and yet the opening was straight lined and angular, no curve to the opening at all. for sure somme experts have spoken up to answer this ?. dave

Troy, Thats a really creative way to develop the pattern. Nice job! did you remove anything from the front edge? Looks mostly stock. I was planning to leave about 5/8" to fold under for a flange to meet the inner panel. After cutting the opening, how far away is that inner panel? I know the cars were crude, I worked for Tom Coddington and remember him saying that the Chrysler guys told the Hurst team to build the cars "fast and cheap" so the racers could afford to get them race ready without going broke in the process.

Here are some good pictures of Steve Atwells car.

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4....those hammer marks were not done by Hurst by the way..

I'm not sure if this is an orginal Hemi Dart in the background but you can see some work will have to be done to the leading edge of the rear wheel openings. It looks like they have already started some on the front.