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Old 08-05-2008, 04:59 AM   #50 (permalink)
blackjackel
EcoModding Apprentice
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: los angeles
Posts: 119

Whitey - '05 toyota corolla LE
90 day: 28.91 mpg (US)
Thanks: 0
Thanked 7 Times in 2 Posts
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Alright, well I've met with cfg83 and we spent a whole day working on the skeleton for the wheel covers... Since I had replaced my jack and spare tire with fix-a-flat we couldn't jack my car up (we tried his jack but the bolts on my tire were slightly larger and so we couldn't get the wheel off), drilling was impossible with the wheel on.

We tried the window security lock idea listed above this post, but it wasn't secure enough... it was going loose with a little abuse... we also tried buying mini clamps from home depot and those didn't work either... there was either not enough room in the wheel well to clamp them or there wasn't enough room between them and the tire to install.... so we scratched that idea too...

What we ended up doing was hot gluing neodymium magnets to both the car and the frame and having the magnets attach to each other, making this skirt cage easily detachable, simple wrench off and snap back on... the attraction between two neodymium magnets was so powerful that it took us great effort to separate them from each other... there is no way I can hit a bump hard enough to get the magnets to fly off of each other.

Here are the pictures:

Wheel with cage on


Same wheel with cage, view from the back


Same wheel with cage, view from the front


Same wheel, view from the top:


Same wheel, closeup of how close the plastic bit gets to the wheel



Same wheel, closeup of how the joint in the cage is hotglued and ziptied together


Closeup of magnet glued to car


Closeup of magnet glued to top of wheel


closeup of magnet glued to cage


cage shown taken off of wheel


Other wheel (left wheel) view


Other wheel back view


Other wheel view from front


Other wheel angle view


Other wheel top down view


Other wheel angle 2


Other wheel angle 3


Back of car view


Much thanks to cfg83 for the help, tools, opinions, and manpower for doing this, we will be modding his car next.

Please please give us some feedback on this, how does it look? Did I go too low on the tire (since the car curves inwards from the top), thoughts? Opinions? Rants?
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