I am interested in rolling the rear fender lips on my car and want to do a good job. I am familiar with various methods on how to do this but I am interested in some feedback from list-members who have done it on their cars. Easy? Hard? Wish you hadn't? Looks good/bad?

Any feedback would be great!

Victor Penner

 

I rolled the fender lips on my mustang. I wouldn't really recommend it for a street car for several reasons.
1. The rolled over lip traps dirt/moisture encouraging rust and corrosion.
2. The rigidity of the fender lip after rolling is greatly reduced which can result in both distortion of the body panel, as well as making it very susceptable to door dings and dents.

Keep in mind, I did this on a vintage mustang which has far heavier duty panels than the R, and I believe the problems I saw in the mustang would probably be worse with the R sheetmetal.

 

Victor's R is a road race car.

Hey Victor, call up Tirerack and ask them if they know someone in your area with a roller. That's the safest way of doing it. There's a place around here with one. It attaches to the hub, and rolls around on the lip. You can roll til your heart's content, though the less rolling you do, the less likely the paint will crack.

If that doesn't work, well, you can always bribe a bunch of friends and bust out that old louisville slugger. The key is to wrap the bat with a towel, and have more people rocking the car back and forth so that they can do it slowly and more controlled.

Warren

 

If your gonna use a bat, you take a heat gun or a powerful hairdryer and heat the metal up some. Becarful to not boil the paint. Then roll the bat back and forth on the lip to fold it in. NOTE: View from the side when doing this to watch for evenness and to make sure its not bending the fender.
A real fender roller is the best way to go, but a bat also works if thats all you can get.

Personally I agree that rolling the fender will probally trap dirt, etc... inside it and rust and damage the metal. But if its a race car who cares!

 

What Warren said. Check out this article ( http://www.overboost.com/story.asp?id=131 ) for information on the fender roller that Warren was referring to. I have heard that you can rent the fender roller from the Tirerack.

 

I heard you can use a baseball bat and wedge it between the tire and the wheel well. You might want hold a heat gun up to paint so it becomes more plieable and prevents it from cracking. Sorta a hack way of doing it, but it should work.

 

Tirerack doesn't have those rollers anymore, because people would just borrow them and never return them

They were really expensive and they aren't made anymore, probably because through misuse it would still crack paint. If you're slow, warm up the paint, and don't over roll, then it shouldn't crack.

Warren

 

I say WIDEBODY! Blister those fenders man

 

I used a big metal pipe from Home Depot, then used touch up paint an any chips.

 

Thanks!

The Haweka roller is awesome and I will look into that, if not then a bat it is. Thanks for the tips.

Victor Penner

 

Victor

have you thought about cutting the fender lips?

it's a more cleaner solution and you don't have to deal (and pay for) cracked paint.

 

Trackie,

I have thought about cutting the lip out but after seeing how our cars are put together while I was having crash damage repaired from a race last year (F@cking Miata!!) I decided against it . The rear quarter panel and the inner fender have quite a few spot welds on that lip and I think you could run into structural problems unless you were a full tube frame. I also wonder about moisture being able to enter there as I am in the very wet NorthWest. Thanks for the idea though.

Victor Penner


[Modified by Victor Penner, 11:53 AM 1/20/2002]

 

Victor

you don't have to cut the entire fender lip off ... just the top portion where tire will make contact. i don't think rust will be a problem if you seal the edges; you can still reuse the rear plastic lip guards if you only trim part of the lip.

i wish i had pics of the cracked paint after we rolled (and slightly flared the fronts ) the fender lips. it was a mess!

btw, vancouver weather has to be better than toronto.

henry

 

Henry,

I will take a look and see how much has to go and maybe that will be the answer.

Thanks

Victor Penner

 

I can recommend a method that I used to roll the fenders on my car. Now I didn't roll mine a tremendous amount, but I only needed to roll them enough to prevent contact with my track wheels/tires which are slightly wider than my street wheels/tires. It didn't chip the paint or wrinkle any of the body panels so I was happy with the results.

Here is what you will need: a rubber mallet, a hydralic jack and a trusty friend. Jack up the car, place the head of rubber mallet between the fender lip and the tire, SLOWLY lower the car until the fender lip is bent to the desired angle. Raise the car and repeat previous step until the complete fender lip has been rolled.

Now I didn't use a heat gun or a hair dryer to heat the fender, but you may want to do this to prevent cracking the paint, especially if you need to roll the fender a lot.


[Modified by BSQ, 5:42 PM 1/20/2002]