Aftermarket Sheetmetal

[67marina]

AMD, DYNACORN, GOODMARK, OEM sheetmetal. I know this has been beaten into the ground so if your not interested in reading another sheetmetal write up this would be a good time to read something else. This write up is based on my personal side by side comparisons of parts from the big 3 aftermarket companies and NOS. My background is in automotive body and paint and also as a mechanic 13 years total working in the field, 4 years school, and been wrenching since i was 10. I know my way around a car. The parts in this write up are for a 67 camaro RS and a 67 firebird 400. Several parts were changed out to another manufacturer due to poor quaility and bad fitment throughout these builds which were over the corse of about 4 years. The pontiac is a slow build that just getting started and the camaro is intended to be a full show restomod and is rounding the corner to being painted for the second time in 3 years, and that is only because it wasnt done to what i consider perfect. Ok, so here we go.

-Goodmark. Parts used; Door skin, quarter panel, quarter skin, tailpan. The door skin that was used was flimsy and wavy. The body lines did not match up perfectly and wewre not crisp. The indents for the door handles were also not very crsip and looked pretty ugly. The top of the door at the fender had a poor contour in comparison to the fender and also stood almost 1/4 inch above the fender it looked horrible.Next is the quarter panel. It was somewhat straight and useable but was not of great quality. Body lines were ok and it matched up to weld points with a little finese. Quarter skin was the same, flimsy and of mediocre quality. Tail pan,.... No. Disposed of it. How they called that a part i have no idea. Overall i will not be buying goodmark parts again.

-Dynacorn. Parts used; Door shells, door skin, tail pan quarter panel, fenders. Lets start with the fenders. I bought these because even with my experience the time it would have taken to repair my old stuff was not worth it. I took a chance on these and it paid off for the most part. The fender on the passenger side fit great. The quality of the steel was night and day from the goodmark. Body lines were crisp and the steel was not wavy or contorted and had no damage. The headlight opening was not perfect and required a litle bit of finese but totally a useable part with minimal work to make fit perfectly. The driver side fender had the same quality but the in flange was welded incorrectly and caused inoperable fitment issues, it was returned. Second driver side fender came and had same issues and was also returned. Now on to door skin and tailpan. I will group these two together and say they are good quality and measurements were good, minimal fitment issues but did have to deal with the top of the door not having correct lines, minor finese work and it did fit well. I did eventually remove both doors and replaced with the dynacorn shells and those were awesome parts, I am beyond happy with that purchase. Minimal repair and a little bit of welding for correct gaps and they looked great, and they fit well with the dynacorn fenders body lines. Once again very happy with that purchase. Passenger quarter panel was nice and heavy straight. good fitment and welded nicely in place with the usual bit of finese.

-GM original. Parts sampled; Driver RS fender. Old n rusty bare steel panel stuffed away for years. I got my hands on this, well borrowed from a friend i should say, for ****s n giggles and just matched it up to see how much better these were to aftermarket. Guess what. They arent. Beacuse these cars were hand built none of them are the same, not even two that ran off the same line a minute behind eachother. So i had almost the same fitment issues here as i did with the good quality aftermarket. I will say that the countour at the top of the fender to door gaps were great but the contour to the door fender at the lower body line left some room to be made up. This by the way was done on a square car, with stock undamaged GM doors. Basically it needed a little bit of work to be 100% which is the same as the aftermarket, the aftermarket just needed a little more.

And lastly AMD. Parts used; driver RS fender, header panel, 400 hood, driver fender (firebird). The first fender i ordered was a driver side for a 67 Camaro RS. Not pleased. it came and had horrible tooling marks, a couple minor dents, and alsp some bent corner. The metal was heavy and sturdy but noticed it had alot more wave to it. I decided not to use this part and sent it back for a replacement. The replacement came and was much better but not without flaws. The waviness was still there which is not a big deal as 3 coats of surfacer levelled it all out. The lines were all crisp and the headlight opening was beautiful, best I have ever see on aftermarket. The tooling marks on the second fender was minimal. There were two small dents in it though, A hammer and dolly worked them out nicely in about a 1/2 hour. pretty happy with it overall. I also got a header and a valance for the camaro and they were both nice, lined up very well and required minimal work on bolt holes for alignment purposes. I ordered a driver fender and a 400 hood for the firebird and they were nice, the hood did dip a little in the corners at the cowl which is stock, had to pry them up with a heavy spoon and float a thin layer of plastic to make perfect. The openings for the scoops were nice and even and the stock inserts fit well with no modification. The fender was the same condition and quality as the camaro so overall i was pretty happy.

After doing all the work to my personal cars my opinion of the aftermarket parts that are available these days is overall much better than it was in previous years. I have fussed with fenders, quarter panels, doors, hoods, you name it and always had alot of hurdles to jump to make the stuff fit, operate, and look correct. I can say that the the new stuff is much, much, much better than even ten years ago. Better quality, better material, better tooling. Having said that i am in no way saying that they are perfect, they are by far not. Just as before you may have to modify, finese, maybe even cut and weld, but it seems to me like they require a lot less shoving and bumping to make an excellent fit you may even have it fit perfectly on the first fit test. I am swayed between AMD and Dynacorn with all the panels i went through, to me they both have good and bad points that will need to be adressed but both were minimal and easy to overcome. Both are really good quality and sturdy parts so i guess in the future when panels are required i will choose the one that has the part i need for the better price. The Oem stuff is great but you wont get a perfect fit right outta the box and to me if i have to work on it anyway why not save the money, a new old stock fender for a 67 Camaro RS will run upwards of a grand, the aftermarket fenders from AMD and Dynacorn will run you about 250 -300 shipped depending on where you buy. I had to ad about 3-4 hours in finese time to my aftermarket parts them to make them fit to my standards (which are extremely high) and i was ok with that because as i said this is my hobby and i enjoy doing it. But even stock out of the box they fit pretty well and for the most part could have been installed shimmed and painted and nobody would have known the difference. Alot of the work i performed was to make an exact 3/16 gap on all openings and perfect contours so mine required a little more work, but as i said my standards are set high. Maybe even to high. Sorry so long guys, hope this helps.

[Schwartz Performance]

Thanks for the review. I get a lot of people asking us "which one is better".. We have experience with mostly Dynacorn, and have encountered the same exact issues as you. It's always a gamble, you never know how it'll turn out & sometimes it's not worth returning such a large panel due to shipping costs.
Again thanks for your opinion, even though you couldn't answer "which one is better" haha ;)

-Dale

[67marina]

Yeah i figured it was best to leave it at opinion lol but my preference is going to be Dynacorn, seemed the steel wasnt wavy on the doors and fenders. I had really good luck with sending stuff back was able to get the comapnys i purchased from to return them. I ordered from Restoration Parts Source in the bay area, since i live not too far i didnt pay shipping costs just picked them up. I got a one bad stamp from them followed bt another and Tony came up and looked at the problem and did what he could to resolve it. Had to return my money because all the parts in the Dynacorn warehouse were same measurements so I ordered the AMD fender from summit. When it came in and was in terrible shape they sent a return order and had it picked up and a replacement sent out. They did however try to tell me that most of these parts would need proffesional installation and that was what the problem is, after I told them I was and explained my history they gave me the return order. Pretty easy to deal with them i would say. Usually if its defective they will cover return costs and i have returned some pretty heavy and or bulky items with just some legitimate explaining.