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My widened 240Z


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Thanks for the ideas. Modification of the bumper might end up being a pricey solution because I would like to maintain a chrome finish.

Running the exhaust out of these holes would be something different.

I guess I'll leave it for now and see how the bumper fits when I take the car down.

Next I will be practicing on body soldering. Let's see if it goes well enough so I dare to share some pics of the result. 

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I personally like a bumper less look, but I'm with 1tuffZ...if you like a bumper, then slightly widen the center section of the bumpers, and flail the ends on the angle to march the quarters. It looks like it would be a bit much of an angle without widening the bumper.

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I am leaning towards deleting the bumper, but we'll see.

In the meantime I've been doing some body soldering which I've never done before. As opposed to my expectations, I did not have much difficulty controlling the melted solder. The most difficult part for me was to apply the correct amount of solder to the right places, the result being that after planing some spots were left on a pit. These will be flattened with some body filler since the thickness required will be less than one millimeter.

 

Here is some pictures of the body soldering:

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After a long wait, I finally received my rims. The wheel spec is 16x9 ET17 with 225/45 tire.

I adjusted the camber to zero degrees to check the clearance (or lack there of) to the fender.

The fitment is tight, which did not come as a surprise.

The options now are:

Machine the rim to get more positive ET or fabricate a wider fender flare out of the OEM fender.

Since there is no guarantee of endurance of the rim if machined and the amount to be machined would be substantial, I am leaning towards fabricating a wider fender flare and rolling the inner fender lip to get clearance fir the wheel.

The down side of this approach is the fact that the body is already widened 2" on each side which happens  to be the maximum allowed amount here in Finland. The outcome is quite subtle though. So the inspection officer probably wouldn't know what hit him.

 

...And the current status: 

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I bet you have a ton of room on the spring side-

I wouldn't go to all that effort to widen the stock fenders and then turn around and put flares on it.

9" wide rim should fit in there perfect if you have the right offset

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I bet you have a ton of room on the spring side-

I wouldn't go to all that effort to widen the stock fenders and then turn around and put flares on it.

9" wide rim should fit in there perfect if you have the right offset

I did not check the clearance to the strut, but you are probably right. The problem is I really like these rims and this is the most positive ET that they (Klutch SL1) come.

There will definitely not be any fiberglass flare coming on top of this. I am talking about an approach such as depicted in this Eastwood video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ksUcM76nrc

 

With some additional fender rolling applied to the inner lip, I do not think the subtle look will be ruined.

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I think your best bet is to exchange the wheels for something with less offset if possible. Myself and many others are running 9" wide, 0 offset wheels under stock sheet metal without issue, with your widened quarters I can't see there being any issue. 

 

 

Can't wait to see it painted though!

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I think your best bet is to exchange the wheels for something with less offset if possible. Myself and many others are running 9" wide, 0 offset wheels under stock sheet metal without issue, with your widened quarters I can't see there being any issue. 

 

 

Can't wait to see it painted though!

The problem in the fitment is due to the GTR32 rear axle which is considerably wider than the 240Z stock rear axle. With 9" wide 0 offset rim the situation would be even worse since my rim is ET17.

After all this trouble, the modification of the stock flare will be a walk in the park. My main concern is that I'll ruin the looks, but if I do it as shown in the linked Youtube video, it should look just right.

 

As I mentioned, there is also the possibility to machine the rim to increase the ET. In the first attached picture, you can see the cone shape in the bottom of the bolt hole where the bolt is to be seated. After the cone there is 12.5mm (1/2 inch) of material thickness. The back side of the rim can be seen in the second picture. The markings are 10mm lower than the mounting surface. Taking 8mm off from that surface would bring it to ET25 and there would still be 4.5mm of material (actually a bit more due to the cone shape) to fix the rim in place.

Could anyone measure their rim to see how much material thickness there is as a reference?

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The only problem I have with the flare you're planning is that it might not give the wheel enough room to go up and down, and you'll have rubbing issues. Doesn't look like you need much flare though, so it might not be an issue.

 

I wouldn't machine the wheel. I get that you really want to run them, but I think a similar looking 3 piece wheel would be best since you can just change out the lip if it's too wide.

Edited by rturbo 930
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Thanks for the ideas. Modification of the bumper might end up being a pricey solution because I would like to maintain a chrome finish.

Running the exhaust out of these holes would be something different.

I guess I'll leave it for now and see how the bumper fits when I take the car down.

Next I will be practicing on body soldering. Let's see if it goes well enough so I dare to share some pics of the result. 

 

Try a 2+2 rear bumper, they are wider. Would be easier to cut down to size if necessary.

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The OE fenders might get under the knife if rolling of the inner lip along with some camber does not do it. What kind of camber angles are people running on these things? I have the GTR-32 rear axle equipped with adjustable upper camber arms so I can play with the angle quite freely.

In the mean time. Here is some pictures of the tack welded passenger side and door fitment. I was also quite eager to check the symmetry, so I climbed up a ladder to get a "new angle". The money shot shows the new curves quite nicely. Seems to be symmetric.

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