Fender rolling is it a DIY or Professional modification?

Fender rolling is it a DIY or Professional modification? Want to drop the front stance and have clearance for the wheels.

 

Depends on your abilities. You can do it yourself but plan on painting the fenders.

 

Did mine with the Eastwood roller and a heat gun. Didnt have to paint anything.

 

I paid a guy $40 to roll mine hoping not to screw up my 1/4 panels but after watching him do it I couldve easily done it myself. the tool does all of the work. it was a cheapo harbor freight tool the guy used too

I hear the older guys say just roll a baseball bat in there but thats too scary for me

oh and I didnt have to paint anything

 

i used a baseball bat and some wait in the rear for mine

 

The roller are not that expensive $50-$100 on eBay don't know how well they work. A Eastwood is $129 and looks the same ?

 

Same here, it's a lot of work, but worth it. Use plenty of heat. The hard part is you are rolling the fender and inner fender.

 

Hi Kevin:
However you roll the fenders , afterwards be sure to apply a good weatherproof caulking to the seam that will be
created by this work to prevent water or mud from collecting in these areas. We've done four cars now and the "rolled" in edge will hold debris if it's not prepped. We "painted" them also afterwards .
Cometized
(Chip)

 

Are there any youtube vids on the process? Is it a hairdryer type gun or a torch? If I go to Harbor Freight website, how would I find it? I like cheapo tools. Lol... I'm gonna repaint anyway

 

Heat gun, kind of in between, harbor freight would be fine. And there are plenty of Youtube vids. You can actually rent both the roller and a heat gun together on Ebay.

 

There's many ways it's done from guys using phone books stacked to the baseball bat rolling but it's best to use the roller and from experience watching other people do it = The roller does a Professional Job.

 

I've watched some YouTube vids on rolling and when I'm ready I'll try the baseball bat method. The guy was a little goofy but I got the basic idea how to do it. Thanks guys for your help.

 

I tried the baseball bat method, it's sketchy on an older car, don't forget the metal is thicker than new cars and you have 2 layers of it to bend at the same time. Take your time doing it.

 

We used a about a 30" piece of 2 1/4" steel exhaust pipe wrapped in duct tape. My friend slowly rolled the car up and down my drive while I pressed the pipe between the fender and the side wall of the tire. It cracked some of the paint on the inner side of the fender lips that I had to paint but it was a small price to pay for getting the 9" differential in there.

Bruce

 

not bashing guys who want a new tool for their collection or anything like that.. but there has been many a world class car builder who's used some of these same old school methods through the years. I'm sure that tool is faster and safer to use for the inexperienced.. but it surely isn't the only way to skin this cat. Someone mentioned weight.. and we also used to use jacks and/or people standing in the trunk to do ours in stages too. We usually relief cut the really tight fits.. hammer with fabric and/or duct tape over wood block.. and used seam sealer with undercoating to avoid air pockets(rust needs oxygen to grow) and protect the newly exposed bare metal. These days I would also pre-prime any bare metal as well but we were pretty cheap back then. lol

Chip(COMETIZED) also gives very good advice in the above or you will eventually cause metal/paint damage as debri becomes increasingly trapped.

As already mentioned, the inner and outer sheetmetal combines to increase thickness/difficulty while simultaneously reducing the total available clearance to be gained. This obviously makes it tougher sledding for those needing that last little bit of clearance. To do this mod correctly on designs like ours and achieve maximum allowable clearance.. the lips MUST be cut to relieve the flange and allow sufficient amounts of stretch so both flanges can "flip up" tight to the inner structure. The relief cuts must be made short of the actual fender radius though or you will end up with a serrated looking opening that needs further repair work as those splits in the metal continue to rip all the way to the outer panels radius. The more cuts you do on the harder corners the better off you are at avoiding that serrated look.

And now back over to the painter side of me again. For those using the heat guns on single stage acrylic paints?.. don't for one second think adding heat will eliminate all delamination and any failure potential down the road. The more you bend the metal from the original shape that it was first painted in?.. the more problematic it will become. Have seen plenty of HIDDEN paint damage on urethane finishes too. Can be peeled/chipped off in small chunks during paint prep/repair work and many times nobody ever realized they were laying there in wait for the right rock chip to open them up to the elements. Plasticizers harden/are depleted on fully cured paint as it gets older and is simply not designed with enough elasticity, especially cheaper/inherently thicker coatings, to stretch and move around that much unless the whole car was treated like a plastic bumper with tons of flex agents being added into both stages. Given their price and additional downsides, I doubt that anyone here is using them in that manner anyways.

Basically, just want to point out that I'm not trying to be the big "master debater"(nick name used for my teenage boy) and work some twisted "holier than thou" superiority complex to build false pride and strut around with. Only saying to be VERY cautious with how far you push a coating out of its originally cured shape all at once because a heat gun or torch won't save you completely as the coatings internal stresses build up and continually remain long after the heat has been turned off. In essence, bent and stretched coatings can turn into a light springs of sorts and it's the hundreds upon hundreds of future expansions and contractions that really does the number on a coatings inter-coat adhesion levels over time.

Good luck with it and don't forget to show us your final results. Could be a damned good sticky if we had enough people contributing and building on it. Power level ain't going down anytime soon and rear tires sure ain't gettin' any smaller either.