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Thread: B13 rear fender flares...in metal.

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Posts: 1-10 of 25
2014-04-27 01:04:02
#1
B13 rear fender flares...in metal.
With another Mt. Washington hillclimb coming up, my friend Tim Mather's '91 Sentra needed a few tweaks done to it to make it a more enjoyable experience than the 2011 event. The biggest issues (aside from no power!) are limited rear tire clearance. The car ran 225/45-15 Hoosiers last time around, on 15 x 7 Kosei wheels. Trouble is they rubbed like crazy out back, both inboard and outboard.

I addressed the inboard clearance issue by building some new rear struts. His old Leda's were leaking like crazy anyway, so I made some aluminum-bodied struts with Koni B15 front inserts. We used short 7" springs and some flat wire Hyperco helper springs, plus I made the strut mounting ears longer to move the strut body inboard. Problem one solved.

For the outboard clearance, the car needed fender flares. The original inner wheelwells were hammered to the outer skin, and the edges were rolled. No good, they still hit badly. So I fabricated a pair of sheetmetal flares from some 22 gauge steel. I roughed out a template from cardboard, then transfered that to the metal. I used a plastic round-faced hammer and a shot-bag and stretched the flat metal into the general shape I wanted. This was followed by a few passes thru an English wheel to smooth the hammer marks out.

Once I got to this point, the wheel flare edge had to be rolled for strength, appearance, and to avoid cutting into the tires. I "turned" the edge initially on a straight T-dolly, but the final 180° rolled edge was made with a custom radiused t-dolly I made for this specific purpose. Then the final edges of the flares were trimmed to match the original cardboard template.

The last step was fitting the flares to the car. It took about 2 hours to make both flares but about 10 hours to fit them and weld them to the car. This included opening up the inner wheelwell and stretching/welding it to meet the new outer flare. This retains unibody strength, keeps the car watertight, and improves tire clearance. All in all it looks almost factory...nothing too radical, but I gained about 3/8" inner tire clearance, and about 1-1/2" outer tire clearance. We might even try to fit 15 x 9 wheels with the same 225/45-15 tires!









2014-04-27 01:07:12
#2
Some more pics of the fabrication and fitment:











- - - Updated - - -

And a few more:







Here you can really see the difference between the stock wheel arch and the new flare.



2014-04-27 01:19:14
#3
Here's the other side of the car. It pretty much went the same, but since the fuel filler was there I was a bit more cautious with the sparks and there was also a bit more rust that had to be attended to. Since I used a TIG to weld them in place, and jumped around with small 1/2" long welds which I cooled quickly, the warpage was minimal. A little bit of planishing the HAZ and a minor fillet of body filler was all that was needed.









2014-04-27 02:47:24
#4
Sweeeet!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Tapatalk
2014-04-27 05:42:48
#5
Awesome work
2014-04-28 18:42:22
#6
Very cool! What are the specs on the car...mostly suspension mods?
2014-04-28 18:58:57
#7
Hahah, you guys are crazier than i am
2014-04-29 05:43:10
#8
Very cool. Debated on doing something like this for the front fenders. Great work!
2014-04-29 05:53:47
#9
zero games played. This is very impressive. Nice work.
2014-04-29 14:40:38
#10
Nothing fancy. It was originally built for track days and then was a rally car for years. It's pretty much bolt ons. Energy Suspension poly bushings throughout. Front strut towers raised 1.5" for more travel, custom camber plates, 450/300 springs for pavement, currently B15 yellow Konis in custom housings front and rear. Used to have custom made Leda remote reservoir adjustables....but they leaked like crazy. The cage is the most important suspension part in this car.

He runs ST sway bars on the track, but we're leaving them off for Washington because of the rough pavement and the gravel sections.

This Sentra SE will probably get revamped once our SER is done. The SER is going to be all tubular fabricated components. Nothing OEM, including subframes and mounting points. It'll get 50 mm inverted Bilsteins.
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