Fender Flares

I actually kinda liked the 'flareless' look with the tires hanging out to be honest.  But using the truck every day made me realize that it just isn't practical to run that way.  In the days following a snow the slush would be sprayed all over the sides of the truck making visibility non-existent.  I had to have flares, but with all the body cut away on my truck no stock flare was going to work.  I knew that the only real option I had was to get a set from Iceland so that's how I started.  I found very friendly people who gave me a lot of help, but in the end I just didn't like the way they looked and I couldn't afford $800 plus shipping right now.

Enter plan B.  

It's important to note that I have NO bodywork experience.  I'm usually spending my time wrecking bodywork, so this was a new direction for me.  I found a set of flares from James Duff for the early Bronco.  Designed for cut out wheel wells, they used a unique 2 piece design.  You mount up a fiberglass 'lip' that you glue the fiberglass flare to.  Since both pieces were separate and semi-flexible it looked like it had potential and might be just big enough to work.

I started with the rear.  It would be easier than the front as the opening is slightly smaller.  I ordered a set of rear flares for $160 from James Duff and they showed up a few days latter.  The rear flares have a slightly more 'square' look to them than the front, so I thought I would try and use them at all 4 corners.  So the one set would do one side in my case.  

I started by cleaning up the working area and pulling off the rubber molding along the side that I didn't plan to reuse anyway.  Those things collect gunk bad, and the screw in design was just begging to start a rust problem in my mind.  There's that original white again.  It was black when I got it but it was obvious it was white originally.  

Looking closely this paint is actually Pearl!  Man, it's been through a lot of paint in it's life.  There are actually plastic mollies that the molding screws into and that is nice since it minimized the rust a bit.  The slots are recessed so that the trim can fit flush unlike the front which sticks out ever so slightly.  OK, enough of that, onto the flares!!

I started by just clamping the mounting lip to the opening to see what I was up against.  I was working in the garage so lighting is poor and it's hard to see very well, I apologize for that and will try and fill in what you can't see with words.  Here is the lip just clamped up in it's 'natural' position, but under mid line.  It's hard to see, but the way it slopes off at the back it wouldn't cover the wheel opening.

The beauty of fiberglass is it's flexible!  I threw a couple more clamps on and tweaked it to cover the opening.  Damn, now it covers the rear lamp.

Threw the flare over the lip to make sure it could handle the new position and see about lamp clearance.  Yep, have to try something different.

Another thing I hadn't considered is that the flare needs to sit several inches forward of the bottom to look right.  Here the lip is mounted to match the opening, but it actually needs to be further forward.  Man, this is a pain!

OK, I slid it forward which allows the rear lamp to clear too.  But the wheel opening was exposed again.  I was able to counter this by moving the flare up, but now it would be above the rub line.  While this was obviously the best way to mount it and would clear the bigger tires I normally run I just didn't want to go -though- the trim. 

You can see how much higher it sits in this picture.  OK,  I'm going to sleep on it and try again tomorrow, this is harder than expected.

Well, I did some serious tweaking and working the next night and got it to finally mount up something close to what I was after.  I had to change the basic shape of the flare a lot to make it work.  To the point where the mounting lip was wanting to crack and break it was under such force.  I ended up cutting it into sections and mounting up pieces of it to make the new shape.

The front is looking pretty good.

The back needs some work.  I did a lot more sanding and got it to be a tighter fit.  I then put the glue on the lip and duct taped the crap out of it to hold it into position.

The weekend was here and  I worked outside since it was warm and nice.  You can see the fiberglass work I did to patch things up and make the fit tighter.

Didn't need much at all up front, I got a nice fit.

While the rear was WAY tighter than this when I glued it to the mounting lip, the tape wasn't enough and the flare pulled away and left a healthy gap to fill.  I had never worked with fiberglass and I bought a repair kit from the auto parts store and went after it.  Obviously I was a little heavy handed with the application.  OK, this was a learning experience.  While I'm at it, I learned to wear gloves when applying fiberglass resin! :-(

OK, let that dry and move to the front.  Clean and remove trim.

This was the piece I was really interested in.  It is a $60 piece from a 463 and wraps around the front and fits under the headlamp surround and grill assembly.  It would appear that you need 463 fenders to make it work and I wanted to see if that was the case.

Here is it taped into place.

The biggest problem was here.  I'm not sure how the 463 fender is different, but this piece sits over an inch too far back.  I think I could find a way to make it work, but not today, and not without spending $150 for the headlamp surround. 

The front looks OK.  There is gap on the side, but if the tabs that are holding the piece off the truck were under the body like they should be the fit would be pretty darn close.

Well, that was a nice distraction, but back to the flare action.  Initial fit up wasn't very encouraging, it didn't even look close.

I had learned from the back that you can 'cheat' the whole assembly up while flattening the top line.  I do this by shaving down the top like the line shows and making the top of the flare more flat and less of a slope.  It's hard to visualize, but it moves the whole setup up while not moving the top line up.

That's looking better.  Yes, I go through some tape.  I'll have to flatten it out a bit like a Jeep since there is no way to make it conform to the tapered front end.

Another thing I learned from the back was that tape won't hold a piece under tension, and this one was under WAY more tension to fit right.  Driving a few screws in until the glue dries was the new method.  The little holes left behind are nothing to patch.

Speaking of the rear, lets get back to that.  Having sanded off the fiberglass patch work I laid down a thin layer of Bondo body filler to smooth things out.   I didn't spend hours finishing it out since I plan to paint it this summer.  So I just got it reasonably smooth and moved on.

Once again, not much time spent in finishing it out.  I'll paint things good later.  A quick coat of spray paint to make everything black for now.  I'm not wild about the look, kind goofy looking to me, but this is all about function.

Actually looks better from angles that aren't right from the side.

And most importantly it covers the tires pretty well!

OK, back to the front.  I got the them mounted up and the fiberglass filler on and smoothed out.

Much less of that this time except at the very front where I just had to widen things a bit to make it fit the contour well.

By not extending the flare down the front I managed to keep the great tire exposure.  Makes a big difference if climbing a rock taller than your bumper.

So here is the finished product.  I have to say that now that they are painted up and finished they look better than I expected.  If you look closely you can see that they aren't perfect, but I can work on them to make them look better when I work on the body more this summer.  Most importantly, they will keep a lot more junk off the truck and make it nicer to use from day to day.

One of the more interesting effects was how much smaller it makes the wheel wells look.  In reality I will need to cut even more sheet metal away to finish the job, but it certainly looks tighter.  Makes the 35's look big!

So this project is done for now, just need to scrap up the money to do the other side!  If you are looking for an alternate flare that allows you to run larger tires without lifting, this should certainly be considered.  The tires are 315/70-17 BFG AT KO's and I am running stock springs.  I might have a touch more lift with the axle swap, but I would think that you could run 35" tires with no lift on a stock G with no lift with these flares.