Afraid of Rust

[AirOlson]

I want to take off my fender flares, but i'm worried the fenders will rust easier. Any coating or layer of protection I could use to protect my fenders?

 

[CallMeAnEngineer]

Your fender flares don't do that much to prevent rust. If anything, they just prevent gravel from striking the outer fender. You could run a 1" strip of bed liner (herculiner is the best DIY bedliner I've found) along the lip of the fender just in case a stray rock jumps up at it.

 

[Nelsonmd]

Just don't take them off. You are going to have some holes afterwards from where they mounted which will be susceptible to rust. I know it probably doesn't sound very helpful, but I would recommend making peace with the flares and leave them there. IMO the bedliner stuff makes the vehicle look petty beater-ish. If it is your off-road rig and you want it to look tough and "experienced", then that's perfect; but if you still want it to look nice, then IMO you don't want to bedliner it.

Please don't take that as an insult to bedliner fans out there.

 

[CallMeAnEngineer]

Yup, this thing is such a beater with bed liner on the rocker panels / doors

 

[Nelsonmd]

Yup, this thing is such a beater with bed liner on the rocker panels / doors

Look, I said don't take it as an insult. Instead of the sarcasm, just post your picture and say that you disagree and think your's looks very nice with bedliner.

And yes, I think that your's looks about as nice as it can look, but you have put as little on as possible essentially (just on the bumper, the running boards, and a low line on the doors, whereas others seen here have done either the entire body, or a higher line on the doors, and over the fenders as well, which the OP is talking about).

And even so, I'd say that your job doesn't look as good as is if it were a stock option, so yes, it looks pretty obviously DIY (again, not a bad thing). I think that having a paint line stop mid-panel without a pinstripe or a physically different piece (like on the LTD models) makes it look a DIY job, and not as nice as a stock option (for an on-road vehicle of course; for off-road, I do take function over form, so it looks good if it looks like it'll survive anything).

Here's some examples of what I had in mind from your suggestion:

Also very well done, but IMO looks a little beater-ish despite being done very well. Or put another way, the bedliner seems to clash with how nice the rest of the vehicle looks.

Also very well done, I think looks pretty good because he followed physical lines with the bedliner. Probably wouldn't look as good up close, but from the pics, kinda looks like it could be stock.

Same thing here, though I wish he'd have stopped on the doors at the insert peice:

The OP doesn't say anything about this being an abused/off-road rig, so I assume that he is like the majority of us, meaning it's a DD and maybe occasionally gets onto some easy off-road terrain. If he still wants it to look good as an on-road, DD vehicle, then I'd still suggest keeping the flares on and not bedlining it (unless you basically re-paint the flares with bedliner, I think that's fine because it keeps the stock look).

And BTW, purely from an asthetic standpoint, I think a 1" line of bedliner in place of flares would look terrible unless you could follow some of the stock lines. I think it'd look really kludged. But again, if you can show a pic and think it looks good, that's fine, it's all individual tastes at the end of the day.

 

[Nelsonmd]

And just to maybe throw more fuel on the fire, here is what I often think of when I see some of the bedliner-ed vehicles

I actually kind of like the look of the vehicross, I just wouldn't choose this one to drive my date to a nice restaurant, or to a wedding or something a bit more formal like that. I'm a monogamous car owner, so I take that into account when working on/modifying my 4runner because I don't have another nicer car to take.

I do cavort with a motorcycle on the side though. Sheila knows and understands...

 

[CallMeAnEngineer]

Oh! I had no clue that you were talking about that much lol. My bad. It looks trashy once you get too much of it on a vehicle, but a little bedliner that isn't too overbearing isn't too bad. Like you said, just leave the fender flares on and youll never have issue.

 

[Nelsonmd]

Yeah, what will really kill the looks IMO is the fact that bedlining after removing the flares will leave some holes, and the thing will look kind of naked without something there. Even the very small chrome trim makes it look more complete.

Olsen, why do you want to remove the flares? Are you worried about bashing them on trees, or are you just trying to lean out the profile? Flares are almost always preferred for looks.