Hi everyone - New to this forum but I have owned my 1991 3VZ since 2000 (150K miles!) and feel like it is time for a little aesthetic love. I'm sure I'll have many questions and I am excited to slowly learn and give back as my project progresses. My local body shop said that if I remove panels and bring them to them they'll be happy to paint the professionally. First step will be both fenders, the hood, and whatever the grill thingy is called that the windshield wipers stick out of. Both fenders have significant rust at the base where they attach with two bolts by the lower door hinge. I could see this area was in bad shape but once I removed the right one I found it was worse than I thought. My initial idea was to get two new fenders to address the rust. Looking online I found they are discontinued and settled on a $100 right hand side one from PartsGeek.com. For $100 I was willing to risk the quality and see what showed up before I ordered the left .

Today I unbolted the old one and found that the mounting point is pretty much rusted through. I am OK at welding and since this is an area that is not really seen I was wondering if there are patch panels available? I suppose I could bang something together but I'd much rather weld in a new connection point in the area that the body panel completely covers. This is what it looks like this morning:




The next step was to test fit the new panel and I am not impressed. It looked right but when it was put in place it just showed how slightly different the quality was. I tweaked it as best I could but each solution in one area meant a problem somewhere else. Little discrepancies that means nothing really lines up as well as the original.


Huge gap to the bumper when all bolted solid:





So if I am going to take the time to do a project I might as well do it right. The rest of the original fender is in great shape, so here's where I jump in a little over my head, but think I might make this work. I plan to use the new fender but only as a small replacement part for the old one. I will cut out the area in the image below and do the same with the new fender and tack weld and then final weld it into the old fender. Worst case is I lose $100 and need to take it to someone who actually welds for a living.


So back to the original question: Do patch panels for the lower cab mounting point area exist or do I need to make something from scratch? I had a look and maybe I am just calling them the wrong thing in my search. Any resources to recommend?

Thanks - wish me luck.