Project 3 from Jason: Fender Roller.

Since I have my car low and did not go with the option of air ride, I needed to roll my fenders to clear the tires for more aggressive driving. I was looking at buying a fender roller but the cheapest one I found that I liked was ~$250 so I just decided to make one.

VW includes a jack that is about worthless to use unless you want about a 50 percent chance of the car falling... Maybe that is a high or even low percentage of it happening but just everyone I know wont even use one if its all they had. Anyways it made a nice donor for this project. I forget the plate thickness I used and the size of the square tube but 1inch and 11/4 seem to ring a bell.

I didn't have access to a plasma and used an oxy-acetylene set. This was my first time with one of those and you can tell that I needed to practice free handing some circles. The bolt pattern that I drilled will fit either 4x100 or 5x100. They share the top hole if I remember right but I don't use it.

Here is a VW jack
Attachment 2077

Here is the base plate that bolts to the hub
Attachment 2067

Added on the pieces that the threaded rod would slide into.
Attachment 2068

Put two flat pieces for the tube to have a pivot point
Attachment 2072

Added the hooking parts for the upright to the threaded rod.
Attachment 2069
Attachment 2071

Done
Attachment 2070

Now these are the only pictures I could find for some reason but I know I took more. I will look for them some more later and if I still cant find them then I can always just take a new pic of it. Not shown is the reason I have a smaller tube but it is used because the roller is height adjustable. The smaller square tube will slide in the larger. The wheel is attached to the top of the smaller tube and can be tilted forwards or backwards to get the angle you need during the roll. There was not a lot of time really that was put into this. I really wish I could find my other pictures as they show the rest of it.

have you used this yet? what did you end up using for a wheel? most of the commercial options use a funky-shaped polyurethane wheel. I've always been curious to know how well these work. it looks like you did a nice job adapting what you had.

if you have used it, how much did you have to move the fender? did you use a heat gun?

sorry for the 20 questions, just curious. I've never known anyone personally who's used one.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ogorir

have you used this yet? what did you end up using for a wheel? most of the commercial options use a funky-shaped polyurethane wheel. I've always been curious to know how well these work. it looks like you did a nice job adapting what you had.

if you have used it, how much did you have to move the fender? did you use a heat gun?

sorry for the 20 questions, just curious. I've never known anyone personally who's used one.

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They do work and you should use a heat gun to warm the paint so it can stretch. If you don't use a heat gun it can work but you have a higher risk of cracking the paint. These are used to roll the lip of the fender up and then flush against the outer edge. I used a poly wheel from I think it was a tracker supply store but I know skateboard wheels work well also and I will probably change mine to one in the future since they are small. A downside to doing this but really not a huge problem is you need to remove the seam sealer that is behind the lip if there is any. If you do not remove it, you probably will never get it to roll. I would spray the metal with something to seal it after removing the sealer and before rolling it. You could also always go back after rolling and seal it again with some seam sealer. There are people who actually try to roll the fender far enough to push it out but that takes a lot of force and I have seen it leave the outter edge wavy. The best method for that is to pull the fender after you roll the lip.