aweful cracking sound ,need help

I had this 73 Swinger show up at my place this one time. It had a broken T-bar and the passenger side had fallen down. Of course the fender was messed up too.
Course I had spare parts so Out with the old and in with;waitaminute, somethings not right here. You guessed it the LCA pin-tube was torn out of the K. So had to fix that first.
Anyway; customer said it had been making an awful screaching/creaking, noise for a few days prior,lol.
I had to pound the fender back into a reasonable facsimile of stock. It was ugly. But it drove for many more years.