I figured this would be something interesting to share for the folks that don’t frequent my build page. With the amount of time that went into this project I’m not ashamed to start a new thread to share haha
There are countless hours in shaping, sanding, filling, and sanding, and then more sanding again in these. They add absolutely 0 functionality (except for covering the wheel poke but an extra 1.5ish inches) and are purely for looks. I have the McNeil Racing wide front fenders from the taoma and always thought it looked funny to have a bulging front (that's what she said) but a skinny, flat rear. The easiest way I found to custom shape these within a "reasonable" amount of time was to keep the factory shape somewhat, hence the reason they look so stock-ish.
These were built up fully on the factory flare pieces using a 2-part expanding foam, which was shaped to what I thought I wanted them to look like roughly, then I covered all the pieces in a couple of layers of bondo-glass (reinforced body filler that has fiberglass strands in it) for strength, and finally followed by layers upon layers of actual body filler to get the surface smooth. It took countless hours of sanding over the last couple of months. And that was just the first side..
The second big challenge was to replicate the shape near-identical on the passenger side... to do this I used a contour tool I had laying around the house for some trim work. I basically marked the panels in 1" increments and went back and forth with the contour tool, sanded, filled and sanded again, to get the shape close to identical. It certainly isn't 100% identical, but for all intensive purposes it will do. I would say its about 90% there, and since you can't see both side at the same time I can live with it.
By the time I hit this week, I was just simply burned out on all the sanding and resanding.. so I called it quits, picked up some paint, and sprayed these panels. Some of them aren't all that perfectly prepped and have have some pin-holes and rough spots, but from 5 feet back they looks perfectly find, and match the rest of the trail-damaged panels. Late this year this thing is getting a color change which will hide any and all imperfections (not to mention there's a good chance I'll destroy these the first time out on a trail...) so I'm perfectly happy with how these came out.
I ran out of clips this morning to finish mounting all the panels, so the overall pics will follow later this weekend hopefully. But for the time being.. I can call project Big Booty Judy complete... I think having a custom widebody rear flare setup on this particular 4th gen really goes well with the rest of the unique/custom work I have in it. Anyhow, figured I would share my experience/project. If I had to do it all over again, I would definitely see if I could source the wide flares that don't fit the 2003 and do the custom fibeglass work to make them fit rather than starting from scratch..
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
There are countless hours in shaping, sanding, filling, and sanding, and then more sanding again in these. They add absolutely 0 functionality (except for covering the wheel poke but an extra 1.5ish inches) and are purely for looks. I have the McNeil Racing wide front fenders from the taoma and always thought it looked funny to have a bulging front (that's what she said) but a skinny, flat rear. The easiest way I found to custom shape these within a "reasonable" amount of time was to keep the factory shape somewhat, hence the reason they look so stock-ish.
These were built up fully on the factory flare pieces using a 2-part expanding foam, which was shaped to what I thought I wanted them to look like roughly, then I covered all the pieces in a couple of layers of bondo-glass (reinforced body filler that has fiberglass strands in it) for strength, and finally followed by layers upon layers of actual body filler to get the surface smooth. It took countless hours of sanding over the last couple of months. And that was just the first side..
The second big challenge was to replicate the shape near-identical on the passenger side... to do this I used a contour tool I had laying around the house for some trim work. I basically marked the panels in 1" increments and went back and forth with the contour tool, sanded, filled and sanded again, to get the shape close to identical. It certainly isn't 100% identical, but for all intensive purposes it will do. I would say its about 90% there, and since you can't see both side at the same time I can live with it.
By the time I hit this week, I was just simply burned out on all the sanding and resanding.. so I called it quits, picked up some paint, and sprayed these panels. Some of them aren't all that perfectly prepped and have have some pin-holes and rough spots, but from 5 feet back they looks perfectly find, and match the rest of the trail-damaged panels. Late this year this thing is getting a color change which will hide any and all imperfections (not to mention there's a good chance I'll destroy these the first time out on a trail...) so I'm perfectly happy with how these came out.
I ran out of clips this morning to finish mounting all the panels, so the overall pics will follow later this weekend hopefully. But for the time being.. I can call project Big Booty Judy complete... I think having a custom widebody rear flare setup on this particular 4th gen really goes well with the rest of the unique/custom work I have in it. Anyhow, figured I would share my experience/project. If I had to do it all over again, I would definitely see if I could source the wide flares that don't fit the 2003 and do the custom fibeglass work to make them fit rather than starting from scratch..
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Last edited:
