Blow up my Skirt (70 Chevelle Plastic Inner Skirt)

[ssbrewskyaz]

Let's see, I called Ted Williams the other day, no not the dearly departed baseball player, but the Ted Williams from TWE (Ted Williams Enterprises)http://www.twe.us/index.html, and we had an interesting conversation regarding plastic inner fender skirts for 70 Chevelles.

Now based on what Ted said, he re-did the molds for the 70 inner skirts about a year ago and swears that these things fit. In fact, he says they installed several after the molds were re-done with no problems to speak of.

I'm told that there are two major companies reproducing the Chevelle plastic inners, one being TWE and the other is unknown, at least to me. I'm told that TWE did the engineering for the skirt molds and that they were made in the good ole USA, however, both of the aforementioned companies skirts are produced in good ole Taiwan.

CPU tells me that the skirts they sent me were from TWE. Now I don't have a PHD, wouldn't trust an American butt on top of a rocket I designed, but I can damn sure put a fender skirt on a classic car I'm restoring. I realize that some parts fit better than others and am accustomed to finessing just about every part I get my hands on to get the best fit. However, in my experiance so far, these are the most ill fitting aggravating pieces I have ever had occasion to deal with.

For example, some of the holes will have to be elongated to make the other holes line up which fortunately is not a problem because of the generous size of the inner fender washer. the fender lip holes all seam to line up good with only a little pucker of which I can again elongate slightly to eliminate. Unfortunately, the upper bolts that go into the fender are only 3/4 - 1 inch long and the skirt is at least 1 3/4 inch from the hole. The problem is I don't particularly want to start carving up $300.00 worth of plastic and ultimately find out the thing won't fit right no how.

So tell me, and I'm sure there's a bunch of you folks that can and will; Are Ted and the boys blowing smoke up my skirt, or do I need to trade my 1/2 socket in for a crochet needle? ...SWB... [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/dunno.gif[/img]

[Musclecarkid]

I have not tried the new plastic repro skirts yet, but have found that even on GM fenders and GM skirts you have to install all the attaching bolts loosely and always have to use an alignment pin to line up the holes. Once all the bolts are in place, start from the middle and tighten the bolts. Nohing is perfect, not even GM.

[JoeG]

Ted Williams--He had some nice nos stock when he was in business,also had a great catalog.
The original plastic fenderwells on the '69 chevelles, were actually a mixture of plastic and fiberglas fibers,very durable, not like the solid plastic repos I've seen.They had to be waltzed in,like some parts do from time to time. I got tired of cracks around the bolt holes with the plastic repos., so I installed nos GM metal fenderwells. -------------Never had any experience with the'70's.- ( I didn't have to elongate the holes on the plastic repos ,they did line up back then, and there was some play around the bolt holes.)-------JoeG