Fender Rolling
 

I recently had an auto-x and I decided to lower my car down another inch front and rear.

After I lowered it down and the suspension got settled I realized I did not have enough clearance.

I didn't feel like raising it back up so I decided to roll the fenders.

The tools I used were one aluminum baseball bat, one cloth rag, one hacksaw, factory jack and one heat gun.

I started with the front. I jacked the car up just enough to fit the thick end of the baseball bat between the fender and tire. I then lowered the car down two cranks. Before I started to roll the baseball bat along the tire I heated up the area with a heat gun to prevent cracking paint. I also wrapped the end off the bat with a cloth. Then I rolled the bat along the tire and pushed the fender out. I kept lowering the car down and rolling the bat along the tire until the fender was pushed out enough to have clearance.

After the fender was rolled I needed to remove a portion of the plastic inner fender liner becaues it could no longer attach to the lip of the fender. That is what I used the hack saw for.

The back I did the same way, but it is not noticible because it just bent the indside of the fender flat. Feel back there and you will know what I a talking about.

Overall it took about two hours to do the whole thing. It was not difficult. It just takes some guts to take a baseball bat to your car :tongue: .

Close up of the rolled front fender.
http://www.318ti.org/gallery/data/50...m/DSC03436.JPG

Picture further back of rolled fenders.
http://www.318ti.org/gallery/data/50...m/DSC03440.JPG

it looks quite good now they seem to come out more....

Yes the fronts come out much more. About half an inch I think. I will post another pic from the front view in a few hours.

I'd be too afraid to do that myself :tears:

If yourgame is autocross be sure to be careful with how much flare you get,
too much and youll bump to a prepared class...

Dave

Yeap, same here. I have to admit it, you need to have guts to do it with a baseball bat. Nice work!

I hope to fit 235/40/17 series tires on there. So there maybe more fender rolling to come. (and maybe some cool drifting videos the day before new tires :icon_evil )

I just ordered new tires for my ti and there 235/40/17 and i talked to someone at a wheel and tire shop and they said you should not have a problem putting the 235/40/17 tires on so hopefully i wont have to run into any fender rolling problems :)

I don't think you will unless your car is lowered about 2.5-3 inches.

im planning on putting on 225/40/18 tires on my 98 318ti. The store that i plan on buying them at said there's a chance i'll have to roll my rear fender. Does anybody know for sure if that's what i'll have to do?

255 size tires here :)

I have 18x9's in the rear and i used to have 245\40 and they rubbed with fender rolling. I have 225's now and there is tons of room. You could prolly run a 245\35 with no problems though.

fenders look great, i wouldn't have had the balls to do it myself either though

Fenders look awesome :smile:

I just did some more fender rolling to fit 235/40/17 hankook RS 212s. I had to roll/pull the rear fenders out.

I took the rear wheels off and put the car on jack stands. At first I was alittle unsure about how to get the fenders to pull out since there is ALOT of metal there. It took a little persuasion with a sledgehammer, but after the metal lip was pounded flat the fender started to flare out like I wanted. It took a bit of work to get the flare to look ok since I did use a sledgehammer.

After the rears were flared out to where I wanted I put the tires back on and used the baseball bat to roll the fenders out a bit more. The baseball bat also helped to even out imperfections in the rear.

I will post up pics tomorrow with the 215s on and friday when the hankooks come in.

Thanks to S10Mafia for holding the heat gun and letting me use is barn.