hi guys...
my neighbor has a ford ranger and he wants to be able to stick some "meat" under the rear fender. he has fg flares up front, so he needed to flare his rears. so what he did was take a scissor jack or two and put it between the frame and the fender and slowly opened it. he made a smooth form out of wood and used it to make the flare smooth.

could this be applied to a 914? very subtle flares that could enable some serious "meat" ? or is this essentialy the "baseball bat trick"?

this is what i mean.....lodge the jak between inside of fender well and inside of fender with a formed shape,

lines on the bottom of the screen are "shaped pieces/ form" and you push that in the outward direction slowly....could this be done?

could gain an inch or three....
(blue indicates new "shape" of fender)

It sounds alot like the baseball bat trick, although this one sounds like it 'could' work with better success. I really dont know, Im just bumping this cus I wana know..

A buddy of mine seen your post {a body man for 14 yrs} and he believes it will work . but suggest doing it to a junk car first. he also says your paint will suffer bad cracks,take it out real slow and it should work. and watch how far you go ,it could pull welds loose beings you wont be able to feel the added tension of the welds.

I'd be worried it would stretch the gaps between the fenders and the doors.

You will be able to change the shape, but not stretch the metal with this technique. The loads are spread out too much. While this will give a smooth shape it won't move far before other places start to give. My guess is you won't get more than an inch. Also, the inner fender will be deformed unless there is a way to spread the loads at the inner end of the jack as well.

I did this on my Nissan truck to gain a little room, it changes the door gaps if you want to get any real clearance in the fender. I got about an inch of flare, but my door gap at the bottom is now about 3/8". I wouldn't try it on a nice car.

The only way that would be much better than the bat method would be if the rest of the perimeter of the fender were restrained so that you would actually be stretch forming. This would require an extensive heavy duty frame system to hold the fender in place, and would be hard to control.

John www.ghiaspecialties.com

There's a guy that showed up to the Roadglue drive on September 14th who had done this to his fenders so he could fit 7" wide Fuchs on the rear.

Actually he explained that the body shop had done it prior to painting. I'd guess that it stretched about 1/2 inch. They also rolled the fender lip. He said they left the jacks in place for like two days so the fenders would take the stretch permanantly.

There is a gent in the Seattle/Olympia area with a nice silver car shod with 8" fuchs and 245's. He used the fender-pushing method with some wooden forms and a porta-power. The only noticeable downside is it DID stretch the door gap some (he had to point it out to me). It still looks great though. A few years ago at a gathering in Rennton I was looking at it. I was soaking in the great paintjob and had been looking the car over for several minutes before I figured out what I was seeing. Very well done. (He did say the body shop had to clean it up a little when it was in for the paintjob).

-Ben M.

I used a jack in the same way you're talking about on my rear fenders. I had to use two jacks at once and some pieces of plywood to spread the load out-using one jack just puts a dent in the fender. It will work but the metal will stretch when jacked out and than it will return to nearly where it was when you started. So you have to really be careful and jack it out, than block it, than re-jack it out.

Paul

I started doing this on my car with a small hydraulic jack, wood blocks and some foam.

I don’t think the block was long enough because I ended up getting a vertical crease in the top of my fender so I stopped. I will probably do it some more when I get a better idea how far I need to go. The crease went in and is totally fixable.

I would be careful and go slow, push on a large area.

I did something similar, but I had to cut the fender to make it look correct...I welded in new metal...once done, the average person would think the fenders had not been modified

Fender Mods

The picture is after I did the body work.....16x8 with 225's under "stock" fenders

I rolled my fenders so the 205x50 Kuhmo's on 7x15 cookies would fit. Started with a 1 1/2" pipe and that wasnt enough. Used a 2 1/2" piece then went to a 4x4 piece of wood. I still need to do some body work to make them look alright but for AX who cares.
Geoff

Geoff,

What's up with the gray and black lines?
leftover pinstripes?

sorry for the lame photshop editing....but is this what you mean? green is the "restraining frame" ...something that spread out the load on the inner fenderwell and went up along side of car to prevent over stretching of perimeter?

At one time it had a fancy gold and black pinstripe motif. The hood was pretty cool too.
I saw them in 76 with this on them at the dealer, pinstripes were really big then. Atleast this car didn't get the godawful bodyside molding that every dealer put on.
Geoff

Here is a pic of Eric Frys car running 225 Hoosiers. He used a porta pull to stretch the fenders to make them fit. Note the bottom of the door gap!
Geoff

What does it mean...rolled fenders? And what the hell is the baseball bat method?
Cheers, Elliot

Hi Aaron,

The frame for stretch forming would have to be a lot more extensive than that. It would restrain the quarter panel so that the rest could be stretch formed. This takes a lot of force, and is a poor method for flaring on a car. It's used for pieces that are mounted in a fixture...kind of like if you had a thin sheet of rubber held in your hands and pushed in the center with your foot.

Elliot,

The bat method is where you take a bat or other similar tool and pry against the tire to move the fender. Very little actual stretching (thinning of the metal with an increase in area) takes place. It is mostly a rearrangement of the form that is there already.

John www.ghiaspecialties.com

With the bat method you are rolling or folding over the inner lip of the fender opening. Reach in and feel the inner lip of the fender and feel the edge. The bat rolls this metal flat against the outer lip of the fender. By using a 4x4 I was able to get a little stretching of the whole fender (sure cracked the paint all to hell) so the bigger tires wouldn't rub on the inner fender.

Sometime John, I need to come out to see your shop. I know Zach pretty well so how far along is his car?

Geoff

Hi Geoff,

I've got about 1-1/2" inches of extra room in the right rear so far. We are shooting for 2". The fender is covered with small stretched bumps at the moment. You are welcome to come visit, just email to set up a good time to come over: ghiafab@msn.com

John www.ghiaspecialties.com

Goeff, Sick minds thingk alike I was just talking to John about the same thing...
We should hook up, you need to drive the yellow car since I installed the new shifter ..sweet!

Rich, come out and play on Saturday at Bremerton AX.

Sounds like a plan. Shoot me some details.

An Idea just hit me, you guys are saying that using the jack and so forth wont stretch the fenders, just pull the demensions of the rear off.. what if, you set up the meathod you guys are talking about, and got the jacks in there, then use something to heat them up, like Johns spinning disks, then open the jacks up and heat up the fenders, and the area that would be stretched again? then leave the jacks in there for a while.. Wouldnt that stretch the fenders instead of changing the demensions? Just an idea.. flame away!

No flame...but the shrinking disc shrinks, and you want to stretch. Heat can make it easier to stretch, but for flares it is too hard to control and unnecessary when all you have to do is hit the metal with a ballpeen hammer. There is more to it .... but for the basic stretching that is all that is required. After all of the stretching, the shrinking disc will help smooth the area by shrinking the high spots.

John www.ghiaspecialties.com

My dad suggested a torch, to heat up the fender. I understand your shrinking disks now John. So do you think that heating up the fenders while pushing them out will prevent the door gap? I am thinking that I am going to do this with my car, I need to pull it out an inch or more, so a simple rolling just wont do. Thanks guys!

Andrew,

I tried the heat and hydralic press method, after chokeing on the fumes from the undercoating, I decided to cut reliefs in the fenders and pull them out using a jack and then filling in the reliefs with metal.

Too hard to control the heat like John said

I looked at your flareing pics, and it looks good, although I dont know what you mean by reliefs, did you just cut out the fender? or what did you do.. Thanks

it's like cutting a pie, then you can pull out the pieces a bit and then add material and smooth it out.

Andyrew,

Check out the post about wheels for fender flares by VWZach. He posted a picture of the flare we are making for his car. It is about 1-1/2" wider than stock so far. No heat at all, just thousands of hits with the ballpeen. I believe this is the best way to do flares on the car on a budget unless you have access to more expensive tools. I would never use heat to help shape sheet metal except when shrinking. Zach is going to help me make a video of the process if everything works out...we'll know in a few weeks.

John www.ghiaspecialties.com