06-29-2014, 10:57 PM
So if you’ve been to a Massiv Monday meet lately you know that my car’s rear wheelarches are seriously rusted out and in need of repair.
Fortunately, for not a lot of money, there are European made rust repair patches available for that area – made of good quality, OE thickness steel and nicely coated. I found a bodyshop that did both sides for 800 with me providing the panels; and eventually, after a huge misstep on one side, they did a pretty good job.
And because my ultimate goal is to plastidip the whole car, I asked the body shop to weld in the repair panels and take it only to primer – and they found a primer that is fairly close to the car’s colour.
One of the unintended consequences of the repair, however, was that the lip of the repaired wheelarch stood straight out from the arch and the tire now had a serious rubbing problem on a sharp edge (you can sort of see what I mean in the pic with the repair panel leaning against the car) even with being no lower than a stock SVT – in other words I was in need of a serious fender rolling.
So I borrowed scorcher’s newly acquired fender roller and went to work this past Saturday.
There are plenty of vids on youtube on how to roll fenders, so I won’t repeat that info here … suffice to say that mounting the roller was really simple but figuring out the ideal geometry of the roller itself was less so.
I will say that in my case I ended up having to knock down the edge of the lip with a rubber mallet to get the process started because at first I couldn't get a proper angle on the edge and the roller was simply trying to dig into the edge inside of rolling it up.
Additionally, even as I was rolling I had to constantly adjust the angle of the large arm to accommodate the arc of the arch and its curve in and away from the wheel – and to do the whole thing I had to adjust the “height” of the roller a number of times. I found it easiest to start in the middle and work my way to one end and then the other.
From start to finish the whole thing took 90 minutes - I didn't bother heating the metal as the hot sun had it nice and toasty.
You can see the rust damage here:
![[Image: IMG_20140521_204001_zps8611e299.jpg]](http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk44/Scorcher000/IMG_20140521_204001_zps8611e299.jpg)
Here's the repair panel - it's hard to see but the inside edge sticks straight out almost 1/2 inch:
![[Image: DSQuarterPanelwithReplacement_zpsa5adfb1...4046354953]](http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d84/ztwsquared/DSQuarterPanelwithReplacement_zpsa5adfb19.jpg?1404046337665&1404046354953)
Fender roller installed - paint colour matches nicely.
![[Image: FenderRoller1_zpsee35f9d2.jpg?1404046337...4046428911]](http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d84/ztwsquared/FenderRoller1_zpsee35f9d2.jpg?1404046337665&1404046354952&1404046428911)
And the fender edge now rolled:
![[Image: Afterrolling_zps6691be3e.jpg?14040463376...4046428919]](http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d84/ztwsquared/Afterrolling_zps6691be3e.jpg?1404046337667&1404046354955&1404046428919)
Fortunately, for not a lot of money, there are European made rust repair patches available for that area – made of good quality, OE thickness steel and nicely coated. I found a bodyshop that did both sides for 800 with me providing the panels; and eventually, after a huge misstep on one side, they did a pretty good job.
And because my ultimate goal is to plastidip the whole car, I asked the body shop to weld in the repair panels and take it only to primer – and they found a primer that is fairly close to the car’s colour.
One of the unintended consequences of the repair, however, was that the lip of the repaired wheelarch stood straight out from the arch and the tire now had a serious rubbing problem on a sharp edge (you can sort of see what I mean in the pic with the repair panel leaning against the car) even with being no lower than a stock SVT – in other words I was in need of a serious fender rolling.
So I borrowed scorcher’s newly acquired fender roller and went to work this past Saturday.
There are plenty of vids on youtube on how to roll fenders, so I won’t repeat that info here … suffice to say that mounting the roller was really simple but figuring out the ideal geometry of the roller itself was less so.
I will say that in my case I ended up having to knock down the edge of the lip with a rubber mallet to get the process started because at first I couldn't get a proper angle on the edge and the roller was simply trying to dig into the edge inside of rolling it up.
Additionally, even as I was rolling I had to constantly adjust the angle of the large arm to accommodate the arc of the arch and its curve in and away from the wheel – and to do the whole thing I had to adjust the “height” of the roller a number of times. I found it easiest to start in the middle and work my way to one end and then the other.
From start to finish the whole thing took 90 minutes - I didn't bother heating the metal as the hot sun had it nice and toasty.
You can see the rust damage here:
Here's the repair panel - it's hard to see but the inside edge sticks straight out almost 1/2 inch:
Fender roller installed - paint colour matches nicely.
And the fender edge now rolled: