The front flares are held on by a handful of phillips screws and double sided tape. Remove the screws, I short stubby phllips head screw driver will be helpful here. After the screws are removed slowly work the flare off, the tape does a good job of keeping it on.
The rear flares arent as straight forward. There are two phillips head screw drivers at the bottom of each side of the flare, (two total on each flare) remove those.
You will see pop rivets on the inside lip of the flare, DO NOT DRILL THOSE OUT! They do not hold the fender on!
In the fender well there are 5 nuts, 2 are exposed, and 3 have plastic caps protecting them.
WARNING! These bolts are small, and rusty. Hit them with PB blaster for a few days before. Each flare has 5. I snaped 4 bolts on each flare removing them. If they break, it can be fixed. (further down).
After those nuts are removed, the flares slide off.
If you broke some studs when removing them, pay attention to the position of those bracket/studs. All use the center hole of the bracket except the two lowest ones. Keep this in mind when reassembling. If you had some break, or plan on painting, drill the rivets out, and remove the brackets.
Now you will start your Skidz Cut on the fenders. I would suggest using a few layers of masking tape as I did to protect the paint from the recipricating saw when cutting.
Now its time to sand those flares, if you plan to paint them.
I uses 220 gritt to do my sanding, which turns out it was too rough. My front flares have visible sanding marks. I painted the front flares first, then rear flares. I wet sended the rear flares at 400 grit, and they turned out better. But couldn't get all the sanding marks out from the heavier grit. A sanding block is very helpful.
I lost the measurements I had taken for these cuts. Of course they are gonna be slightly different. but basically, just line everything up, make your mark on the flare where the highest point of your skidz cut is, mark it on your flare, and there ya go. Mark it over the same distance at the bottom as the template says.
Now with a Skill saw/jig saw, Make your cut. Keep in mind you will have to trim the holes at the bottom for the fender support brace bolt some. It will be best to take the cut into the curve of the flare, but dont go all the way through!
Now time to test fit.
Get you some clamps, and clamp it as pictured to get everything lined up.
If you are satisfied with everything drill a hole in the flare for a rivet to hold the flare in place. A short 1/8" rivet will work nicely. If not, move up to a medium length rivet.
Picture of the short rivets.
As you can see here I trimmed a bit too much for the fender bolt brace support cut outs.
All riveted up, clamped into place. These flares are ready to be mounted back if you dont want to paint, or round the edges up.
The back of the flares are gonna have a little bit of gap after this mod, but its no big deal.
Now the real time consuming part. Rounding up the cuts you just made.
Im not sure what the best product is for this. I decided to use plastic epoxy to fill in the cuts. A tube is .8 oz, and $5 a tube. I think it took me 6 tubes to do it all.
Fill the cuts in, its a long process that will require lots of filling, sanding, filling, sanding, filling, sanding. Till its just right. If you sand your rivets too they wont be as noticable when paint is applied.
Once you finally get all those rounded up its time to resintall the mounting brackets on the rear flares. If you broke some studs, you can dry drilling them out. I had a heck of a time drilling em out. after I got the stud out, the head of the stud still stayed. I got some new bolts from Fastenal and had my buddy spot weld them into place. If you play it right, and get lucky, you can place these new bolts in one of the 3 other holes, while still lining them up correctly.
See the position of the brackets/studs in the pictures above! As I said, I had my buddy spot weld the new botls in, because I couldn't find any studs. And they all lined back up perfectly, I didn't need to drill any new holes in the fender to get them to mount up.
Now its time for paint. Clean the flares up, wash em, let em dry, clean em up with alcohal or whatever cleaner you like. Spray the flares with a plastic primer/adhesion promoter. I couldn't find any locally, so I had to order online (after ordering online I found plastic primer at lowes of course). Rustoleum Mettalic Midnight paint, available at lowes, Clear coat, and 2000 grit sand paper.
Spray the primer, then your paint following the direction on the can. My paint was VERY rough. I think becuase of the glitter in the paint? Because of the roughness after many coats of paint I wet sanded with 2000 gritt sandpaper. Made it nice and smooth. Then clear coated. and 2000 grit wetsanded the clear coat for a smooth finish.
*these images are too large, so they are linked*
http://photos.imageevent.com/rc_racer_0 ... lares1.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/rc_racer_0 ... lares2.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/rc_racer_0 ... lares3.jpg
Word of caution, when you have your flares done, and are mounting them especially the front ones. be careful when tightening the screw around your cuts/filler. Both of mine are devolping a verticle crack in the filler from stress of being mounted. I suspect it will get worst, but still be better then no filler. I added a few washers behidn the flare, and on the screw to keep the flare from pushing in so much, minimizing stress. The rears shouldnt be as big of a problem.
Hope this helps, I hope I wasn't too confusing, if I need to add/edit anything let me know and ill do so.
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