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?

[Series9]

They go on centered over the original opening. It's a subjective process, but I strongly suggest you NOT rely on rockers or spoilers to place them correctly. I had to modify both valences and both rockers on the RS.

[Eric_Shea]

QUOTE

Either way it seems the front belly pan, air dam, what ever will need to be shortened to match up. Have you guys experienced this or are my flares just F'd up?

Well...

Do you have a GT spoiler up front or will you be using a stock one that you'll need to make flared ends for anyway?

Here's what I would do after doing a couple of glass and steel installs:

1. Install the GT spoiler on the front (or similar spoiler made for the flares). Use that as a rough-in to position the front flare. Buy anywhere from 2-4 of the el Cheapo body clamp kits (8-16 clamps) from Harbor Freight ($9.00 each) to position the flares and the ends of the front spoiler.

2. Install the GT rockers. There is no such thing as a GT rear valance (on a factory GT) but I believe there have been some aftermarket ones made, so the rear position of the rear flare may not be that important. Use the rockers to position the front of your rear flares and to gauge the position of your front flares with the valance.

As Joe mentioned, you may have to work with them a bit. I found my rockers worked, unlike his... (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/confused24.gif)

I had a "very" hard time with my front valance but I attribute that to Rennspeed.

Finally, Google "Armando and 914-6/GT". Look at all the John Lowe pictures of GT's and the various others out there. The front shoulder is in-line with the top of the fender on the factory cars. There's a ton of photos there for reference.

Also remember that the factory GT's were good 50 footers. None of their stuff lined up all that well, as appearant in the GT photo's on Armando's site

[Root_Werks]

Same as factory flares:

Rears are centered.

Fronts are pulled up to align the rear fender lips pushing the front opening further forward a little.

[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.

[John Kelly]

I don't know if this will help...sometimes simply squeezing the flare onto the car will open up the wheel opening a little, conversly, pulling out on the flare when it is loosely clamped will shorten the wheel opening distance.

John www.ghiaspecialties.com