I don't know about the later cars, but I can say with great certainty that the "splash shields" on a 1971 Pantera are more of a " minor splash deterrent" than an actual shield. They leave so much open space that they really don't protect the inner reaches of the bodywork. This is particularly annoying to anyone who has actually tried to clean those areas out. Yeah, I know, OCD — but hey, up north here we need to find ways to keep ourselves from freezing to death in the winter.
Since it's still a bit miserable out, and I now have two cars needing these, I finally decided to invest some time into patterning and fabricating some decent shields for the inner fenders.
This is how the forward part of the front fender is on the 1971 cars (without the later factory retrofit shield):
The area behind the front wheel isn't much better, particularly at the bottom where the rockers meet the fender.
And while most of our vendors make zoomy-looking polished stainless shields for in front of the rear wheels (and yet seemingly rarely with any gaskets), the area behind the rear wheels is left wide open for flying crap.
It took a many hours crunched up inside the fenders with cardboard, tape and scissors to make patterns that fit. Once done, I traced them onto clean thin card stock and did a test re-fit to be sure the templates were good. Then those templates were traced onto thin (about 3/32" thick) Kydex® Sheet. It is an impact-resistant, flame retardant semi-rigid plastic that has excellent chemical resistance, is black and has a slight texture to the surface. It isn't the cheapest material but it works very well for the purpose. I then edged the "outer and top" edges with crimp-on weather stripping (thanks David!) to ensure a good seal against the body.
Once I've finished all my under-fender work, the entire area will be sprayed with KROWN rust-proofing which should prevent any moisture from being trapped between the seals and the bodywork. I'm also working on sheets that I will attach to the underside of the tops of the front fenders to protect them from rocks being slung up and denting the paint from below.
Here's the final results:
Drivers-side Front fender (forward):
Drivers-side (facing rear):
Passenger front (forward):
Passenger front (facing rear)
Passenger rear (facing rearward):
I added some gaskets to my polished stainless rear (front-facing) shields, but I still need to work on a solution for the very top where the gaskets just can't follow the contours. A project for another evening…
After a summer of running I plan to remove these and evaluate their effectiveness and make improvements as required.
Mark
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