fender rolling woes
02-17-18, 05:56 PM
#1
Rookie
Thread Starter
fender rolling woes
Its all said and done for me now, and im the type of guy who usually doesnt have "nice" things, so it doesnt bother me much being the ratty kinda guy i am. lol. But i would like to put this out there as a forewarning or a helpful hint, tips from some guy, dont do what i did kind of thing to help out future gs diy guys in the fender rolling department.
Ill begin with the rear. If you are going to do the usual shave and roll i will say one thing, dont "shave" too much. i went after it with a mindset of cutting a little more off just gives me a little more clearance and a little less metal to persuade in my pursuit of fitment......mistake number one. After cutting pretty much the entire square hole off (dig into it and that will make sense, its the hole that the plastic clips go into that receive the screws for the factory edge trim piece) and getting into the roll process pretty far, thats when i found out it was a mistake as there is a inner and an outer quarter panel and that lip that you are rolling is in fact two layers of sheetmetal that are not attached to each other this close to the edge. So there i was with a heavy roll and the two pieces seperated!!! leaving me in a pickle. So at this point i needed to trim the "lip" portion of the inner quarter off so that i had a flat piece go down and able to be tucked in to the rolled lip of the outer quarter, once that was done it worked out ok, added a fair bit of time to the project fighting with it but oh well, lesson learned and the passenger side didnt have the same mistake. I did however have to do a pretty heavy pull on top of that and my edges got kinda wavy, not terrible but noticeable for sure.
Next we will make a mention of the front. Easy enough, trim the liner a little on the lip side, trim the two tabs that hold the liner (youll see) then you end up with a nice straight line along the lip. Get your roll on, again a fairly heavy roll/slight pull. Driver side I ended up with two dents/ripples from where the square holes were for the same trim screw receiver plastic doohickys were, an odd metal tension situation that didnt give an even stretch the metal. So once i was done and happy with the amount out i was i body hammered the dents a bit and made them slightly better but again still noticeable, and i saw that hey these things split on me while i was rolling!......hmm, so maybe if i cut out the edge of the square hole it will give less metal tension for an easier roll and hopefully no dents/waves. Tried that on the passenger side, Mistake number 2, all was going well until i get to the flat part of the roll and starting to pull and in my roll, plunk that same location a dent appears and brings a tear in the metal with it out to the face!!! Well FML, and to top it all off that allowed the lip to fold inwards at that point. Well that fender is ruined, some pliers and hammer and dolly action, 2x4 hammer and she clears and is kind of a straight line but looks like hammered dog ****. So definitely do not cut them holes open, you might be inviting some trouble.
So all in all, i got it done, im not terribly upset with the way it looks. Like i said im a ratrod, ratbike, grease monkey, thrash kinda guy...so looking like it does is still not horrible and fits me just fine, lol. Not to mention itll all fall right in line later, youll have to wait and see on that one. Oh and always use your heat gun!!! If you plan on sparing your paint, i forgot mine on the rears, and with the pull it got a little wrecked, worked much better on the fronts at keeping the paint in tact and flexible. Hair dryer did me no good BTW.
So there it is, theres my contribution. Sorry i didnt take any pics to go along with it for progress and process, im not good at documenting and working, especially if im just trying to get it done. Hopefully this can help some other poor soul not ruin his car that he wants to look actually nice.
Ill begin with the rear. If you are going to do the usual shave and roll i will say one thing, dont "shave" too much. i went after it with a mindset of cutting a little more off just gives me a little more clearance and a little less metal to persuade in my pursuit of fitment......mistake number one. After cutting pretty much the entire square hole off (dig into it and that will make sense, its the hole that the plastic clips go into that receive the screws for the factory edge trim piece) and getting into the roll process pretty far, thats when i found out it was a mistake as there is a inner and an outer quarter panel and that lip that you are rolling is in fact two layers of sheetmetal that are not attached to each other this close to the edge. So there i was with a heavy roll and the two pieces seperated!!! leaving me in a pickle. So at this point i needed to trim the "lip" portion of the inner quarter off so that i had a flat piece go down and able to be tucked in to the rolled lip of the outer quarter, once that was done it worked out ok, added a fair bit of time to the project fighting with it but oh well, lesson learned and the passenger side didnt have the same mistake. I did however have to do a pretty heavy pull on top of that and my edges got kinda wavy, not terrible but noticeable for sure.
Next we will make a mention of the front. Easy enough, trim the liner a little on the lip side, trim the two tabs that hold the liner (youll see) then you end up with a nice straight line along the lip. Get your roll on, again a fairly heavy roll/slight pull. Driver side I ended up with two dents/ripples from where the square holes were for the same trim screw receiver plastic doohickys were, an odd metal tension situation that didnt give an even stretch the metal. So once i was done and happy with the amount out i was i body hammered the dents a bit and made them slightly better but again still noticeable, and i saw that hey these things split on me while i was rolling!......hmm, so maybe if i cut out the edge of the square hole it will give less metal tension for an easier roll and hopefully no dents/waves. Tried that on the passenger side, Mistake number 2, all was going well until i get to the flat part of the roll and starting to pull and in my roll, plunk that same location a dent appears and brings a tear in the metal with it out to the face!!! Well FML, and to top it all off that allowed the lip to fold inwards at that point. Well that fender is ruined, some pliers and hammer and dolly action, 2x4 hammer and she clears and is kind of a straight line but looks like hammered dog ****. So definitely do not cut them holes open, you might be inviting some trouble.
So all in all, i got it done, im not terribly upset with the way it looks. Like i said im a ratrod, ratbike, grease monkey, thrash kinda guy...so looking like it does is still not horrible and fits me just fine, lol. Not to mention itll all fall right in line later, youll have to wait and see on that one. Oh and always use your heat gun!!! If you plan on sparing your paint, i forgot mine on the rears, and with the pull it got a little wrecked, worked much better on the fronts at keeping the paint in tact and flexible. Hair dryer did me no good BTW.
So there it is, theres my contribution. Sorry i didnt take any pics to go along with it for progress and process, im not good at documenting and working, especially if im just trying to get it done. Hopefully this can help some other poor soul not ruin his car that he wants to look actually nice.
02-17-18, 07:55 PM
#2
Fender rolling or even pulling can be a headache on the GS. I've done mine and I've tried to fix it over and over again. The end result was bacon fenders. I have very aggressive fitting wheels and tires so I had to do all I can to get these to fit. The plan for now is to roll with it until I get radiussed flares welded on. I'm not too bothered by bacon fenders at the moment. I think I'd be more bothered if I had conservative fitting wheels.
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jeffy (02-17-18)
02-17-18, 11:38 PM
#4
Rookie
Thread Starter
lol, bacon fenders. perfect description. im fine living with it so no big deal there with me either, still a ton better than stanky stockness.
thank you very much moarpower!! as soon as my wife saw it she asked if anybody made weld on flares that were prefabbed, i told her that i didnt think anybody did that and id have to graft something or custom make. coming from the mini truck scene like she did there was plenty of stuff like that out there for the major trucks, plenty of fabbed but her instant thoughts went back to that. lol. glad to see there is an option out there besides hitting up the junkyard and hacking some panels for what im looking for, and at that price!! nice.
thank you very much moarpower!! as soon as my wife saw it she asked if anybody made weld on flares that were prefabbed, i told her that i didnt think anybody did that and id have to graft something or custom make. coming from the mini truck scene like she did there was plenty of stuff like that out there for the major trucks, plenty of fabbed but her instant thoughts went back to that. lol. glad to see there is an option out there besides hitting up the junkyard and hacking some panels for what im looking for, and at that price!! nice.
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SorrGwa
GS - 2nd Gen (1998-2005)
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09-26-09 01:22 PM
