I hope this can help someone, it took a lot longer than I thought it would so be prepared for a long job.

Rear Arches

Firstly sketch out the area you wish to remove and take all the paint off it (photo 5 + 7), I did this with a sanding pads on a grinder disc. You can get a rough line by holding the gtr flare up and running a pen along the underside. Make sure you cut away enough.

You then need to seperate the outside skin from the inside one. The easy way to do this is to just go along the wheel arch using an angle grinder with a really thin disc to take the lip off so the two will seperate. In photo 4 I pulled one apart with a screw driver and it was a total waste of time, just chop the ends off.

Once the two skins are seperate then use a very thin cutting disc to made all the verticle cuts marked out on photo 5. Bend all the front skin section outwards and then cut away all the inside skin using the grinder as shown in photo 3. Once this is done you can see (photo 1) that a section is also double skin on the inside, just spot weld the two inside panels every inch or so to secure them together before folding the pieces over and welding.

I found it best to weld the two middle two sections shown in photo 1 before bending the others so the panel had some strength and a hammer could be used to help.

Tack all the others down and beat gently with a hammer until they have the inside skin shape (photo 2). Photo 6 & 10 show my dodgy welds. The welder I was using would only work on a high amp and was doing a lot of burning through the panel, making life very difficult with lots of molten steel dropping on my ankles. Clean all the welds up with the grinder and grinding disc then paint away. I chose to put fibre glass bog with steel in it over the inside to smooth it out a bit.

This fibreglass bog is also ideal for strengthing the mounting points of the flares as if you buy a set from challenge fibreglass like me they won't line up with the guards properly. If you were to just pop rivit them on as Alfa suggested they would break the flare as soon as you tried to tighten them up. I spoke to Phil from Challenge about this and he stated that the addition of bog to fix this problem was common place on nearly all aftermarket flares.

The overall job wasn't too neat but the area won't be seen once the flares are on so I wasn't worried. It ended up being very strong after all the welding.

I'll post more photos when I get round to doing the front ones and fitting the flares. I'll be changing the flares a little so I won't be putting them on until she comes back from the engineers.

Cheers Andrew

Make sure your car is a lot higher than in the photo so you have more access space as the other side was up about four inches more when done resulting in a much easier job. I am 6 foot 2 though.

great work! don't suppose you want to do another one

it looks really good.. i have a feeling thatwe cut a little too much out of mine to easily get them to join up again..

Post some more pics when you fit the flares:)

Hey Kent,

Been offline for a while but back now.

I would love to do your arches for you, for free as well but I now live in Brisbane and can't make it out to yours :cheeky: Don't worry about cutting yours too high as I have been informed by SWR that mine are not cut high enough and the wheels will rub on it.So now I have to do it all over again. I'm very upset as I really should have been smarter and just tacked it in place until SWR were finished:cry::cry::cry::cry::cry:

At the moment mine has the 300zx rear end fitted and the modified R31 front crossmember, steering, suspenion fitted as well as the 318 and 5 speed in. All that is left now is the upgrade of the front brakes and brake lines and then it will be shipped back up to me. Your guess of costing 10k was nearly right, it will end up costing a little more than that to finish.

If you want, go and check it out at SWR as it will only be there for another week or so before heading to QLD.

I still haven't seen what it looks like with the new running gear but I'm sure I'll like it.

I will post a heap of pic's it arrives back up here. I should have the arches fitted before the end of the year hopefully Camo but in saying that I was supposed to be driving the vert right now so that may or may not happen.

Typical! let me know when you come back down!! mind you i have to try and "Remove" the por now

I will be up at SWR on saturday picking up a friends 260z, so i will definately have a look!! i will get some pics for you and send them on!

Hey Andrew, theres a couple of guys on ozdat looking for K rear control arms. Since you've swapped in a 300zx rear end, you could sell off your K parts to them.

Check the parts forum in www.ozdat.com

Hi Camo,

I couldn't find the add for the parts wanted, although I didn't look very hard. Could you tell them to call SWR directly and speak to trent on 02 45772400 I will let him know someone wants them.

I suppose they would have to give them postage and that would be it. My IRS was looking fairly rusted out so I can't promise anything about the condition. I gave the front struts and the hilux 4spot calipers I had to SWR so they won't be available.

Kent make sure you get the sanding pads for the grinder it makes light work of any coating and can't be beat for stripping easy to get to areas.

Did you get a look at it?? I still haven't seen it since I dropped it off.

It turned out that I cut the rear arches perfectly, when I lowered the car without the rear shocks/springs the wheels had 12 and 11 cm left to go before touching the steel. I expect them to touch the fibreglass arch first so they will have about 8cm travel on each rear wheel when the arches are installed. The rear has std height kings springs and the front has been lowered 1inch. It was sitting up more in the front after the v8 was fitted so only the front came down to bring it in line with the rear.

I'll post some more photos of it when it has all the arches on.

What size wheel tyres are you using ?

Nigel

At the moment it has 215/45 r17s all round, i'm aiming to end up with 255/35 R18 on the rear and 225/35 R18 on the front.