Fender Flares - Easiest way to fit a wheel

    Well after my run of fun working on the car, I finally turned over the reins to Jeff at Kool Kolors Rod and Customs.  I firmly believe that sometimes it's alot better to pay somebody to do it right the first time instead of mucking it up.  This is especially true with body work and paint that you can easily see on the car.  Anyways, the new suspension setup made the track width of the car about an inch or two wider than it was originally.  This in itself really isn't a bad thing, more track width definitely helps in the corners.  The only problem this creates is trying to get a wheel to fit the original body opening.  So after talking with Jeff a bit, it was a no brainer to just add fender flares to the car and not deal with shortening the track width or getting wheels with monster offsets to fit.  Besides now I have room to run wider tires if I find it hard to keep the wheels from spinning.  :-)

Checking the Track Width

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The first time I knew something was definitely different about the suspension was just after I placed my wheels on for the first time.  I went with some Vintage 40 series wheels: 16x7 in the front and 16x8 in the rear.  My old wheels were Magnum 500s 15x7 with about the same offset so I didn't think to check before ordering up the new wheels.  Well the back wheels are completely flush with the outside of the rear fender lip.  The thought of hitting a hard bump and having my nice new tires get shreaded to bits by the body quickly came to mind.  Later on I checked the front fender and it had the same issue with rubbing on the inside of the front fender.  At first I thought I ordered the wrong rear-end, so I taped a piece of string across the outside of the wheels on the car to check it.  I measured from this string to the rocker panel at several spots down the side.  Turns out the string was perfectly parallel with the car.  This means that both the front and rear wheel are spaced out exactly the same.  Hence, it's time to massage the fenders. 

Maier Racing

     So I set out looking through various catalogs and researching flares to get a feel of what the market has to offer.  First off I really didn't need that much of a flare to begin with, maybe 1/2" or so.  Secondly, I really didn't want to change the overall look down the side of the car.  I personally think the body lines of the 65-66 mustangs were awesome.  I ended up calling a few vendors looking for dimensions and like most other things ended up talking to the manufacturer to get what I needed.  The nice thing about this is usually you can end up with a pretty sweet package deal.  So after talking with Maier Racing a bit, I ordered up a set of their 1-1/2" flares for the rear, with matching front fenders, and a 2-1/2" cowl hood.  For fiberglass pieces, they arrived in awesome shape, and really won't take that much time to take them from racing quality to show quality.  The one piece front fender with flare is a definite time saver, and the 1-1/2" width still keeps the upper body line in tack.  I can't wait to get some color on the car to see how everything works out.

Front Flares

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So what is nice about having the fender with a molded in flare?  No body work needed, just bolt the thing on and go.  Here you can see that they don't stick out that much at all, but covers the wheel nicely.  When Jeff and the crew do the final mud coat they are going to make sure the upper body crease is there to hide the flare even more.

Rear Flares

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The rear flares take a bit more to graph in.  This is where it pays to pay a good body shop to get it right.  First off they had to mark off and cut both the outer quarter panel and inner wheel-well.  Next they had to weld all that together and fix any funky sheet metal.  I think just about every restoration has to fix some part of the wheel housing because of rust.  Anyways, after that they used panel adhesive and popped riveted the flare onto the car.  Once the adhesive dried, they removed the rivets and filled in all the holes.  Here you can see it at this stage.  Next they are going to smooth out the transition between sheet metal and flare both inside and outside to really blend it in.  Below is a few extra shots of what this whole process looks like.

All sanded in

Here is what the flares look like after a bit of elbow grease and more sanding discs than I care to count.  All I can say is that they did an amazing job to get it to look like they were suppose to be there from the get-go.