914Rubber fender liner installation Options

[raynekat]

Installing the 914Rubber fender liners....

They come with rivets for fastening the plastic liners to the mounting brackets.
It quickly became apparent that installation was going to be difficult if I used the rivets.
The rivets fasten the liner to the mounting brackets and then the brackets use your rocker panel and valance sheet metal bolts to hold the liner in place.

So I opted to use speed nuts that sit on the mounting brackets so that hex headed metric screws could be used instead of the rivets.
Here was the hardware and bracket ready to bolt into the car.



The reason I went this will become apparent pretty quickly.
Here's the leading edge (front) that utilizes the valance mounting bolt.
In theory you could have put this in as a unit (bracket and liner) as you actually have access to the bolt that mounts the valence.



The real problem with the rivet method is mounting the trailing edge (rear) bracket that uses the rocker cover bolt.



You can't access the bolt to secure the bracket to the rocker cover as it's behind the liner.
So with my method you mount the bare bracket first and then fasten the liner to the bracket.
Here's a better view of the finished product.
No way you're getting your hand in behind the liner to tighten or loosen the bracket with the liner in place.




With the speed nut and hex head screws I used, you can easily take the liner off in a matter of minutes without removing the brackets at the valance and rocker panel.
Inspection and cleaning is still an easy thing to accomplish.

[raynekat]

Finished up the passenger side of the front fender liner.
No more difficult that the driver side was.

One thing I did to make the liner fit a little better was shorten it by about 1".
Seemed like the furnished liner was just too long to fit in the desired location.
I made a pattern in cardboard of the end that I wanted to shorten and used that to mark the liner 1" shorter.

I also shaved the sides of the liner a bit as well.
This seemed to allow it to go up into the fender well a little deeper.
YMMV (your mileage may vary). Ha
Definitely there will likely be some custom fitting, so be patient and don't expect to get these in too quickly.
For me, it's a 3 night, 2 beer per night job.....just the way I like it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Hopefully these liners will sit up there without rattling too much.
914's never came with fender liners from the factory (duh), so the fender wells are not really made for a liner.
There is no way to fasten the top part of the liner without drilling into the trunk area which I really didn't want to do.
So you are holding up this upside down C shaped affair only by the bottom attachment points.
Not really optimal, but that's what you've got to work with.
We'll see how they work.
In theory, it's a great idea for our cars.
In practice, many times great ideas don't pan out.
Time will tell.

I've painted the brackets for the rear liners.
The rear liners look like they may fit the fender wells better than the fronts already from just holding them up in the rear wells.
As soon as my additional hardware arrives from Belmetric, I'll install, take pics and share my thoughts.