DIY wide body fender flares – Yep it’s really happening!

I’m still plugging away at the flairs and you know I'm starting to warm up to the idea this just might work! 

As trial an error goes the first layer of fiberglass was both a trial and an error.... I'm not sure why but it bubbled and pulled away from the frame in several spots leaving rather large bumps to deal with.  It's hard to see in the photo but it was pretty nasty.  

I really could see no way to fix it other than to get out the grinder and take off the high spots.  That led to a week of grinding, patching and filling to make the high parts low and the low parts high.  The good news is I figured out a way to keep it from lifting like that again and they are starting to take shape and look good now.



With the fronts now covered I had one of my many sit on the garbage bucket and stare at the car till I figure out how to proceed sessions.  


The more I pondered the more I knew I had to toss everything in the back and start over.  They were just way to small compared to the front and if I don't go really bold back there the big tires will look like a monster truck.

  
So I took the lessons learned from the front and started with an entirely different approach. I pushed things out as far as I could on the quarter and also went straight up at the top about a 1/2" to give it a muscle car sort of shoulder.

I used roughly the same top to bottom curve of the original fender but exaggerated it a lot front to back and came up with this..

 

The photos don't do it justice they have some pretty sexy curves in them.

 

I made each piece for both sides at the same time to keep things as identical as possible.

I also was very careful to make things smooth so no drill holes this time because that distorted the metal.

It's slow putzy work but so far I have about 55 bucks into it so can't really complain. I would have less than that in it if I did have to turn all the fiberglass bumps into dust!

Psalm 37:3-5:

"Trust in the LORD and do good;

Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the LORD;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the LORD,
Trust also in Him, and He will do it."

Hard to believe that one year ago today I cut the tunnel and made my first weld on the car...

OK so maybe cutting off half the fenders was not such a good idea.

I posted my fender flare idea on a couple forums and got an even split of comments.  Half the guys think it will never work, never look good and I ruined the car.  The other half think it’s great and can’t wait to see it done.  I switch camps about as often as I change paint colors.

Since the last post I decided I needed more clearance so I took another whack at the fender wells.

That was fine in the front but in the back I got into the inner fender well farther than I should have and kind of messed it up.

I tried to weld it back together but as usual this car is impossible to weld on.  So I tried to wrap the seam with fiberglass but it was too cold and took forever to set up so it just sort of fell off.

Yeah I have had better days in the garage…  As I contemplated what an idiot I was for not covering the tire and what fun it will be welding new quarters on I decided I should work on the front because when this bombs fenders are easy to replace.   

 

So I finished up my front frames and welded them to the fenders.

 

I spent quite a bit of time trying to get them the same.  I should have covered them with contact paper or something to better see the shape of them but I thought I had it close enough to glass them.

I also should have taken the paint off farther back and primed everything but it was the first 50 degree day in 6 months and the forcast was for snow so now was the time to break out the fiberglass.

Looks like a big nasty wart...

It would be easy to list all the ways this could end up looking awful or structurally unsound.  But as nasty as it looks now in my minds eye I see the end result and I'm feeling fairly OK with it.  Mostly because my wonderful wife reminded me of how many times last year I thought the car would never run again and how confident she is that this is no different.  Yep she is the best wife ever!.  

Update on paint colors - Matte Black is out and Copper Pearl is in!

For the better part of 2 weeks the car was going to be sun burnt copper pearl with silver stripes.  If you are counting that was “this is it” color number 4…  I love the copper but it's just too much of a good thing.  So todays top pick is gloss black with sun burnt copper pearl stripes.

A tad less orange than this and smaller stripes but very close to what this looks like. 

 

And what happened to dark blue and silver that everyone liked?? 

Yeah I know but we have been given so many options!  I'll just have to see what next week brings…