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      04-14-2013, 04:51 PM   #1
1speedbike
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DIY: Fender Pull

Little back-story:

If any of you are following my thread in the Wheels section about getting 19" Michelin PSS sizes to fit on a lowered car, you probably know that I rolled my fenders and these tires still don't fit.

Last summer I had Yokohama tires on my wheels with these specs: 215/35 on 19x8.5 ET35 and 235/30 on 19.9.5 ET45. These BARELY rubbed with the suspension settings the same as they are now. Maybe once in a blue moon, going 75 MPH on the highway I'd hit a big dip and I would get some rub.

Now I have 225/35 and 245/35 Michelin PSS and the rub in front was pretty unbearable. Even worse, my bumper has been a little messed up to begin with, and the tires would rub on the corner of the bumper where it meets the fender, and it would tear up the side of the tire.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, since the roll didn't work, I decided to try and pull the fender a little bit in the front. Some people use rubber mallets to do this, but I decided that the phone book method is the best way to go because it will keep it very even since the book is of uniform thickness.

Here is the DIY:


Materials needed:
-Your car
-A heat gun (hair dryer may work as well, but it'll take longer to heat up the metal)
-A jack (with a BMW jack pad adapter if you're doing this on your 1er)
-A relatively thick phonebook
-Yourself and maybe some friends
-Optional: A sunny day (direct sunlight hitting the paint keeps it hotter while you're doing other stuff and not directly using the heat gun)


What you do:

1) Make sure you're ready and have all your materials. If you're running back and forth looking for stuff, you are more likely to make stupid mistakes.

2) Raise your car with the jack. Simple enough. You don't have to go crazy, just barely high enough to create enough fender gap to insert the phonebook.

IMPORTANT NOTE: At this point, make sure that you use an old cloth to clean the underside/inside of the fender where you'll be pulling. If you have little rocks or debris in there, you may push them through the metal a bit and create dimples or spots on the outside of the paint.

3) Start heating the paint. You want it to be relatively hot. When I had my fenders originally rolled, it was an 88 degree day with direct sunlight so my black paint was hot enough without a heat gun. You want to heat it enough so that you can't keep your hand on the paint for more than a second or two. Cooler paint is actually fine, it doesn't need to literally burn you, but you want to heat it up a lot now so that while you're doing other stuff, it stays warm enough with minimal reheating so you can keep working and doing stuff without worrying constantly about the paint cracking.

4) Insert a phone book into the gap. Either put the binding inside or outside. Don't insert the book with the binding going cross-ways or you'll make a crease in your fender at the spot where the binding of the book is.

5) Keep the paint warm. You'll see this is a common theme in this relatively short DIY.

6) Lower the car. You should see your fender smush the phonebook.

7) Make sure paint is still warm.

8) Open your door on the side of the car with the fender you're pulling. Stand on your door-sill and hop up and down. You'll see the fender flexing on top of the phone book. If this isn't working well enough just by yourself if your phone book isn't quite thick enough or you have a bit more fender gap, you can also have some friends add weight in the car.

9) Make sure paint is still warm.

10) Raise the car again. Reposition the phone book. Keep the paint warm. Repeat with the phone book in the new position.

When I did this, I had the phone book in three positions. One was in the front where the bumper meets the fender. This is where I was rubbing the most. The next position was closer to the top of the fender, with the phone book's edge just where the edge of the fender line is (not under the bumper metal at all). And the last position was closer to the rear of the wheel well. I was not rubbing back there, but I wanted to make it look even all the way around.

Voila. You're done. Repeat with the other wheels.

Some notes: There is some hard plastic under the area where the fender meets the bumper. On one side of my car, this just kinda bent inward with the pressure from the pulling, on the other this actually snapped. This might have something to do with the fact that my bumper has been abused for a long time now. First some ice from a truck, then a rock fell off a dump truck, some regular bumps and scrapes along the bottom, and then I scraped the edge along some wooden siding because I just didn't give a shit any more.

***

Here are some pictures of the process:


Fender gap prior to pulling. Note that you can't really see the top of the tire at all, the gap is too small. You can also see the balled up rubber on that edge that the tire was rubbing on.



Tools you'll need.







Raise the car.



Insert the phone book. Note that this is the first of the three positions I did, as mentioned above.



Lower the car onto the phone book. Then jump around to pull on the fender.



Remove phone book and re-lower the car. You can see the top surface of the tire a little better than in the first pic. Mission accomplished.



End result.





Thank you for looking!
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Last edited by 1speedbike; 04-14-2013 at 05:00 PM..
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      04-14-2013, 06:59 PM   #2
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That looks real good
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      04-14-2013, 07:30 PM   #3
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There's just something not right about using the getto fender roll method on a BMW. Even tho it works just fine usually, I feel like its more appropriate for a honda.
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      04-14-2013, 08:29 PM   #4
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I used to have that attitude too about the car. But in the 5 years of owning it (my first "luxury" / premium car) I've learned that a car really is just a car. It's not a ferrari. It's not even a Porsche. No use in treating it like its made of gold. For example, my front bumper has been seriously fucked for the past year and a half, and while 5 years ago a single scratch would have given me a conniption, and I enjoy things much more by just not caring Sure I can get it fixed, but then I'd have a heart attack every time a pebble flies off of a truck on the highway, or every time a bug engrains itself in the paint.

That's why I just went full retard and did the phone book ghetto method. The car is meant to be enjoyed, and I don't need to pay a shop a few hundred books to stretch some metal using what amounts to the same exact method, except they have a different tool than a phonebook. I'd rather enjoy my PSS tires (which, by the way, are awesome!). The hardwood floors and rugs in my house are nice and expensive too. But I still got a dog, and he shit on the rug and scratched up the floors, and you know what.. It's worth it because I love my dog and it's fun in the long run. Don't sweat the small stuff, even if it does go wrong. In this case, no paint issues and it looks professionally pulled, so no harm done, so nothing did go wrong. If a method works well, then there's no shame in doing it yourself, no matter how "ghetto" it may be.
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      04-14-2013, 08:44 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 1speedbike View Post
I used to have that attitude too about the car. But in the 5 years of owning it (my first "luxury" / premium car) I've learned that a car really is just a car. It's not a ferrari. It's not even a Porsche. No use in treating it like its made of gold. For example, my front bumper has been seriously fucked for the past year and a half, and while 5 years ago a single scratch would have given me a conniption, and I enjoy things much more by just not caring Sure I can get it fixed, but then I'd have a heart attack every time a pebble flies off of a truck on the highway, or every time a bug engrains itself in the paint.

That's why I just went full retard and did the phone book ghetto method. The car is meant to be enjoyed, and I don't need to pay a shop a few hundred books to stretch some metal using what amounts to the same exact method, except they have a different tool than a phonebook. I'd rather enjoy my PSS tires (which, by the way, are awesome!). The hardwood floors and rugs in my house are nice and expensive too. But I still got a dog, and he shit on the rug and scratched up the floors, and you know what.. It's worth it because I love my dog and it's fun in the long run. Don't sweat the small stuff, even if it does go wrong. In this case, no paint issues and it looks professionally pulled, so no harm done, so nothing did go wrong. If a method works well, then there's no shame in doing it yourself, no matter how "ghetto" it may be.
lol...
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      04-14-2013, 08:46 PM   #6
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+1 to this attitude. If you constantly worry about screwing up the car, you're not having as much fun as possible. I know i'll be keeping my car until it blows itself to pieces(or until i blow it to pieces more correctly), so i'll probably end up pulling my fenders exactly like this when i lower mine. Thanks for the DIY!
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      04-14-2013, 09:23 PM   #7
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Great write up and job! I've heard of many more baseball bat advocates, the phone book seems much safer. I pulled that front junction area out until I was getting a fairly large gap between the fender and bumper back when I was running 235/35 front Toyos. Actually with those tires I was rubbing the top of the tire on the fender arch when I turned and went over a large bump with weight in the car. I rarely regular rubbed the fender.

For my rear PSS's I have been thinking about removing my rear tire and using a jack to bend the fender/bumper area out since that area is much harder to bend than in the front. I still need to install my lightweight battery and see if a shop can add any significant camber. Btw, when I talked to Harold at HPA, he seems to think I'll only be able to add like 0.3deg more camber unless I change the rear toe arms and then to go further after that you can add an adjustable upper camber arm.

Can you tell how much clearance you have on the tire side?
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      04-14-2013, 11:59 PM   #8
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Imagining you and your friends jumping up and down on the car with a phone book shoved in between the wheel and fender gave me a good laugh. Props for a job well done.
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      04-15-2013, 05:36 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rukuss View Post
lol...
Don't knock it til you try it

Quote:
Originally Posted by 631twentyeighteye View Post
+1 to this attitude. If you constantly worry about screwing up the car, you're not having as much fun as possible. I know i'll be keeping my car until it blows itself to pieces(or until i blow it to pieces more correctly), so i'll probably end up pulling my fenders exactly like this when i lower mine. Thanks for the DIY!
No problem! Glad the DIY helped.

I'm reading around on these forums and some of these people CHANGE THEIR OWN OIL!!! Like... poor people have to do!! Plebeians, I tell you! D: D:


Quote:
Originally Posted by Eyeman View Post
Great write up and job! I've heard of many more baseball bat advocates, the phone book seems much safer. I pulled that front junction area out until I was getting a fairly large gap between the fender and bumper back when I was running 235/35 front Toyos. Actually with those tires I was rubbing the top of the tire on the fender arch when I turned and went over a large bump with weight in the car. I rarely regular rubbed the fender.

For my rear PSS's I have been thinking about removing my rear tire and using a jack to bend the fender/bumper area out since that area is much harder to bend than in the front. I still need to install my lightweight battery and see if a shop can add any significant camber. Btw, when I talked to Harold at HPA, he seems to think I'll only be able to add like 0.3deg more camber unless I change the rear toe arms and then to go further after that you can add an adjustable upper camber arm.

Can you tell how much clearance you have on the tire side?
Thanks for all the great info! I got it to the point that it only really rubs when turning over a bumper, or over big dips now, so I'm pretty happy. The rear is actually not a problem at all with ET45 and 245 size tires, which I am very happy/surprised with. Are the 255's you have THAT much wider that they're causing such issues? If it were me, I'd prefer to have not so much negative camber in back versus the front where it makes more sense, but that's just me. I'll be honest, I'm not sure how much the battery will help, though. I originally had an almost empty tank of gas, and upon filling up my rubbing (up front!) got noticeably worse, even from that hundred pounds or so of extra weight. How much could the battery possibly save? It seems that this "adventure" of ours never ends lol

I'll try to measure more scientifically when I get a chance haha, but up front I started out with barely 1 finger of space between the tire and the fender. After significant pulling, I can't fit two fingers, but now I can put my thumb in there with a bit of wiggle room to spare. If I had to guess, I had barely a half inch of room at most, and now I have at least 3/4 - 7/8 of an inch. Also, since the fender got pushed out, the gap itself doesn't matter as much because the wheels tucks under the edge of the fender slightly better and there's not really any poking out.


Quote:
Originally Posted by froop View Post


Imagining you and your friends jumping up and down on the car with a phone book shoved in between the wheel and fender gave me a good laugh. Props for a job well done.
Haha thank you. It was just me this time around, but there's a pretty funny video somewhere with a bunch of kids jumping around on a slammed lexus to pull the fender more. They didn't even heat up the paint!
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      04-15-2013, 06:42 PM   #10
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I meant how much space do you have between your front tire and your strut. I'm a little concerned that my fr ET42 might rub on that side. In the rear I'm probably just a little lower than you, currently. Lightweight battery will save me like 30 lbs. I'm definitely not planning much rear camber, just enough to rarely rub.
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      04-15-2013, 07:45 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 1speedbike View Post
Don't knock it til you try it



No problem! Glad the DIY helped.

I'm reading around on these forums and some of these people CHANGE THEIR OWN OIL!!! Like... poor people have to do!! Plebeians, I tell you! D: D:




Thanks for all the great info! I got it to the point that it only really rubs when turning over a bumper, or over big dips now, so I'm pretty happy. The rear is actually not a problem at all with ET45 and 245 size tires, which I am very happy/surprised with. Are the 255's you have THAT much wider that they're causing such issues? If it were me, I'd prefer to have not so much negative camber in back versus the front where it makes more sense, but that's just me. I'll be honest, I'm not sure how much the battery will help, though. I originally had an almost empty tank of gas, and upon filling up my rubbing (up front!) got noticeably worse, even from that hundred pounds or so of extra weight. How much could the battery possibly save? It seems that this "adventure" of ours never ends lol

I'll try to measure more scientifically when I get a chance haha, but up front I started out with barely 1 finger of space between the tire and the fender. After significant pulling, I can't fit two fingers, but now I can put my thumb in there with a bit of wiggle room to spare. If I had to guess, I had barely a half inch of room at most, and now I have at least 3/4 - 7/8 of an inch. Also, since the fender got pushed out, the gap itself doesn't matter as much because the wheels tucks under the edge of the fender slightly better and there's not really any poking out.




Haha thank you. It was just me this time around, but there's a pretty funny video somewhere with a bunch of kids jumping around on a slammed lexus to pull the fender more. They didn't even heat up the paint!

1speed, not laughing at your fender bending method, laughed about your description on how ordinary our cars are, you made it clear the 1er are nothing special, just drive the damn thing right?
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      10-04-2013, 12:38 PM   #12
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so has anyone else done this lol? im tempted to try it.
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      10-04-2013, 12:53 PM   #13
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I did the same thing with a vogue magazine wrapped around a hammer. worked out great.
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      09-29-2016, 04:39 PM   #14
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Sorry to bring back such an old thread but im actually looking to pull my fenders to stop rubbing on my 265/35/19 setup. I already tried rolling my fenders looks great no flaring but still rubbs on highway and semi deep holes as well.
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