Fender Bender (Shane MacGowan I Love You)

1947-1948 Big Twin Fender, I didn't have the heart to cut up an original so this re-pop came in handy. I’ve seen good and terrible reproduction of these fenders, this is one of the good ones, it’s a 3-piece with spot welded sides and correct width of the braces and rivet heads exactly like the original 47-48 so after a quick massage it’s pretty hard to even tell it’s a repro.

I always wanted to bob the rear fender the classic way, you know have a pint and just ditch the hinge pin and forget about it, go listen to AC/DC or whatever but at the same time I always thought the fender is a bit too long even after the rear flip-up part is gone, so out came the angle grinder. In this pic almost 5" is cut off.

This is an idea I’ve had for quite some time, and even thought I've never seen it I am pretty sure it's been done before. It turned out a bit more complicated than I first thought because the stereo in my garage doesn't have a repeat function and I get nervous if I listen to more than one song when I work so today I had to constantly run over and restart "Curse Of Love" by The Pogues until I was done. And once I cut it up everything came apart and both the top and side pieces had to be stretched to fit. Here’s how much I decided to re-use of the rear hinge bit ...ready to get welded back on.

Done! Here's what the shortened fender looks like finished. To trick the eye and make it look stock I also put two extra rivets on top of the fender, so there are still four rivets on it.

…So, after 6-7 hours of work and listening to "Curse Of Love" this fender is 4.1/2” shorter ...and no one will ever notice except me, so this was actually a pretty stupid idea after all.

Ok, right now Shane sings the last refrain so I got to run back over to the stereo.