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Clearance for Rear Wheels

T

TourEnvy

Hard-core CEG'er
Joined
Oct 23, 2006
Messages
2,725
Location
Las Vegas , NV
I was wondering what individuals where doing in order to make clearance for wider rims and/or tires on the rear of our cars.

The inner lip is double thickness making it difficult to bend and also if you didnt notice that is where the outer fender is attached to the unibody via spot weld. Hence the double thickness. This also makes grinding the lip down not a smooth move because you would be removing the spot welds in several areas.

Let me know. Rolling fenders is a curse word around here. It's not beyond me if thats the only method that works on these thick lips :D Im just afraid that might not be able to do it.
 
Rolling the fenders is the preferred method around here for getting a little extra room. I have seen a couple of Contours that had the metal cut or ground away. Looked like poo, and left sharp/jagged edges with which to cut your little paws, should you ever have a reason to grab your wheel arch. I'm need to do this on my SE, stat. The Sean Hylands I have on the car have a more aggressive offset, and coupled with the 225s the smallest bump makes me rub.
 
Will a fender roller handle such thickness? Plus if you put you handle in the middle of the top of the arch you can feel a rectangle bump. I think it would be hard to get that area to fold over.
 
yes, lots of people. for the little bump in the middle, i actually pulled the fender liner and used a dremel to cut out the bump. its just a mounting point for the fender liner but there are enough others that its not an issue. from there i rolled the lips as far up and flat as i could get them.
 
I have just recently. Yeah I wanted to know what the hell that bump was. That was pissing me off when I was rolling my fenders.

Anyway, I rolled my rear fenders and I still rub on bumps. My rear tires are now pretty cut up, and actually to the point where I need to re-arrange my friends so that there is as little weight in the rear seats as possible. It's pissing me off. I'm probably gonna have to fine tune the rear fenders. I've had to take away my 5mm spacers out from back there and put in 3mm spacers, even after I've rolled my fenders.

On the front, well that's a different story. I'm running 8mm spacers :). And yes, there is a definite handling difference. (For anyone wondering, my effective offset's are: F +34, R +39, 17x7 wheel, 225/45 tires)
 
Hey thanks for the heads up on the bump, is that part of the inner sheetmetal? What was both your methods of "rolling"? I did the fronts with a heat gun and a nylon tipped hammer came out awesome. Backs i tried with the hammer and it wasnt going too well so held off till I could get a bat. Now I got a bat and was going to give it another try before I got my alignment. I think Im going to have to pull the 5mm spacer out back to come in spec.
 
All that cutting you are getting on your rear tires are most likely the tab on the rear 1/4 that holds the bumper. That will cut apart any tire. All you do is pound it out away from the car with a hammer. Had to do it on mine and CSVT#49's at SZ in '09.
 
TourEnvy said:
Hey thanks for the heads up on the bump, is that part of the inner sheetmetal? What was both your methods of "rolling"? I did the fronts with a heat gun and a nylon tipped hammer came out awesome. Backs i tried with the hammer and it wasnt going too well so held off till I could get a bat. Now I got a bat and was going to give it another try before I got my alignment. I think Im going to have to pull the 5mm spacer out back to come in spec.
Click to expand...

I rolled my fenders with a fender roller and a heat gun.

blu_fuz said:
All that cutting you are getting on your rear tires are most likely the tab on the rear 1/4 that holds the bumper. That will cut apart any tire. All you do is pound it out away from the car with a hammer. Had to do it on mine and CSVT#49's at SZ in '09.
Click to expand...

Yeah the "slicer" or w/e it's called. I'm gonna be doing that today. So you used just a regular hammer, right? Or did you use a rubber mallet? Or which one would you recommend?
 
Go with rubber first, but you need he small head of a hammer to hit the right spots. It's easy, you'll see.
 
Alright thanks dude. Gonna probably do that in the next 10 mins or so. Hopefully no more sliced S.Drives for me :blackeye:.

Edit: Oh and did you use a heat gun first, and then pounded the tab away? Or just straight up hit it?
 
I just hit it, the paint was flaking off it anyway. The goal is to just get that metal tab to be as close to the bumper shell as you can get it. Hitting it enough to move the rear bumper out a little isn't necessary but it might help for the clearance you need.
 
I just leveraged a bat off the tire. It pretty soft at that point.

I dont have any cutting yet as the car sits, but i still have to fix the camber and want to space out the wheels as much as possible. First things first.
 
Judging by your sig, you have SVTF Euro wheels meaning that you will need some serious spacers to space them out as much as possible. To equal my rear offset, you'll need 10mm spacers. And thing is, it's not all that close to the fender. You can fit some pretty low offset's in the rear, as long as proper fender clearance techniques are used: i.e mashing that slicer tab out of the way, fender lips rolled completely flat etc.

Back to equalling my offset (+39). As long as you don't have 2 passengers in the back seat and/or 20lbs worth of things in the trunk all the time, you'll be fine. Unfortunately, none of my friends have cars so I'm stuck driving them everywhere. With that, there is almost always people in the back which sucks. What, if at all, are you lowered on TourEnvy? That'll make a difference in considering what offset/spacers you wanna run and how much work you wanna put in to making them fit.
 
I had a 40mm offset with 225/45/17s while lowered on B&G springs. they rubbed all the time until i rolled the fenders. after that they only rubbed over large bumps or when i had extra weight in the back (like on the 4 hour trip when i was moving all my stuff back from school).
 
might just try H&R springs? with Eibachs 225/45R17 rubbed but with H&Rs they do not. I don't recall what the offset is on the Superleggeras are...
 
+42. Personally, I like the Koni Kit. My next step are coilovers, but if I had a second Contour/SVT I'd get H&R's.

Did the Eibach's rub all over, or just in the rear? If it was the latter, I'm sure you're not rubbing because the H&R's don't have the ass sag of the Eibach's.
 
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