AA steel flares install question?, For those of you that have done this.... Options

[East coaster]

When installing the front flares, how did you determine the front to rear location? My AA front flares have a wheel well opening about 1" larger than stock (at the bottom of opening), did you just center it or do I need to bias to front or back??

Either way it seems the front belly pan, air dam, what ever will need to be shortened (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/sawzall-smiley.gif) to match up. Have you guys experienced this or are my flares just F'd up?

[ss6]

Ditto what Joe said.

My AA flares were not a perfect match to the stock openings either. Nor did my fiberglas rockers come close to matching - those are sitting in the orphan pile as a result.

I used tape to "hang" the flares over the existing fenders and spent a few hours tweaking position such that the new openings were more or less concentric to, ie centered over, the old ones. Lined up the bottom "flats" on the flares with the "fold-unders" on the bottoms of the stock fenders. I had to "massage" the flares a bit to more or less flatten out (ie follow the contour) of the existing fenders. (Once you hang the fenders and before you cut metal, roll the car outside so you can eyeball it from either side from 10-20 feet and verify your alignments.)

I tack welded the flares right onto the stock fenders, then used a sabre saw with a metal cutting blade to follow the flare edge and cut the original fender out; made for a well aligned butt seam.

Bring a lot of patience, measure twice (at least), sleep on your initial alignments then eyeball them from a distance before you start cutting. Read John Kelly's welding advice. I was a nervous wreck through the whole project, but it turned out well, despite having an early (wavy) set of the AA flares.