1968 SS Dart in progress
Hello Ishore. You need to bend a 4 foot long by 2 1/2" piece of 16 gauge steel to 90* and use a shrinker/stretcher to form the inner wheel lip of the outer quarter skin. That will provide rigidity and the necessary surface area to weld the inner wheel well to. When you initially create your cutout, leave approximately 2-3" of inner wheel housing overlap to provide enough material to heat and bend and finally weld to the lip you created and welded to the inside of the quarter panel. Another option is to do it exactly like the factory did (if you are going for an absolutely authentic cosmetic recreation) and create the inner fender lip structure solely from the inner wheel well and bash the outer quarter skin over that. It looks crude and imperfect but that is how they did it at Hurst. Attached is a picture of the crude way from an actual LO23 car in the shop for a ground up restoration.