Front inner fenders.

[richie2619]

To anyone who's flared their fenders.

On the front fenders,

have you bonded the inner fender to the flare?

Have you through-drilled the plastic and used the screws from the flares hold them in place?

Or have you just done away with them?

 

I'm very close to making a decision to cut my fenders or go with a wheel/tire combo that will fit in the stock configuration.

Edited April 5, 2014 by richie2619

[JMortensen]

There is a good post by 240hoke, called something like "Installing them there ZG flares" which goes through the whole procedure with mistakes to learn from. In the front you just cut the old fender off. In the rear is where it gets tricky, and most people don't cut enough and install their flares too low.

[OldAndyAndTheSea]

The fronts don't have an inner flare, and are really easy to cut.

 

The rears do, so that's what I'm assuming you're talking about.

 

 

Here are some pictures of my install. For reference.

 

I, like most, used rivnuts.

 

 

Took a couple cuts

 

 

 

 

 

cut the tabs

 

Weld it back together. Cover with paint.

 

[richie2619]

I understand the rear inners are steel and need to be welded after cutting.

Up front, my car has plastic inners that are attached to the outers using clips.

 

Thanks JMortensen, I'll look for that post.

And thanks OldAndy, for the pics!

[R3VO 3VOM]

Every case I've seen of flares being installed, the car would be too low to run inner fenders anyway as any compression in the suspension would rub the tire against them. I installed lowering springs on a 240SX once with the clip inner fenders and any driveway or bump in the road would rub the tire on the inner fender. I eventually rubbed holes in them.

 

If you're installing flares at stock ride height you wouldn't even need to cut them really, but I've never compressed the stock suspension of a Z with a wide wheel and tire combo to know if it would hit the fender or not.. But I suppose in this case you could just weld in little tabs and screw the inner fender to the tabs inside the cut fender lip.

 

That being said, my car had the inner fenders you are talking about. I removed them and snagged the 3 piece inner-inner fenders(?) from a parts car as mine never came with them when I bought it. Not the best but better than no inner fender at all.

[richie2619]

Yeah, I crawled up under my car last night and was thinking about making some tabs. I guess it's pretty rare for the originals to be intact.

I've been very lucky to have a Z that's never been wrecked and had virtually no rot!

[John Washington]

That's a great series of pix, OldAndy, mind if I copy and share with a couple of my builders? Would like to give you credit, obviously.

[JMortensen]

I don't mean to burst Andy's bubble, but that doesn't look like it's cut high enough. 240hoke had a thread where he screwed up and then fixed it. Better to get pics of it done right if you're going to share them.

[RebekahsZ]

There's no right or wrong, just high and low. Whatever works for your application.

[John Washington]

I didn't look closely, but you may be right JMortensen. And yes, whatever works for the application is good, but...I have had a couple of builders not cut enough and then have to expend a LOT of effort digging back down to the point where they could do it over, after blowing out tires from getting into the old sheet metal.

[JMortensen]

Exactly John. If you haven't sectioned the struts and you're not running camber plates and have the stock insulators, maybe that works. For a race car, probably not. To know for sure pull the spring, put the wheel and tire on, and jack the suspension to the bumpstop. Running only a 23.5" tall tire with sectioned struts and camber plates I had to cut mine as high up as possible, so that the wheel arch is essentially flat, almost no curve down on the outside.

[John Washington]

That's exactly what I recommend, but in all the years I've been doing this I've never properly documented it!

 

Working on a BMW Z3 rebody right now and expect (hope) that will take me off in a new direction with little time to look back:)