Quote:
Originally Posted by teoman
That key looks very awesome! ... Would you mind doing a tutorial on it?
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I will do that, but this post is just about the wheel well covers.
I didn't take enough photos, so here is a hand-drawn set of sketches of the mechanism I used for mounting the wheel well covers:
Here is the conduit pipe (found in the road) that I cut to make 10 mounting "clips":
You can see in the diagrams I drew that I cut a slit into the sections of pipe and a hole for the sheet metal screw. You can also see a side elevation of the wheel well with various clips and mounts installed. Lastly, in the diagram, I drew an image depicting how the clip works to hold the cover on to the car. Essentially, the sheet metal screw goes through the wheel well cover and directly into the conduit pipe clip. When tightened the sheet metal screw is essentially clamping the wheel well cover to the side of the body of the car via the clip mounted inside the wheel well. I used pieces of one-sided sticky weatherstripping that I had laying around to create a cushion so that the hard plastic doesn't scrape up the paint. I wish I had done that in the previous generation of these wheel well covers, because I did damage my paint. I stopped caring about the paint that much years ago, but I don't seek to do damage to it.
A key goal of these wheel well covers is to avoid any sort of structure underneath the cover. substructure adds complexity and bulk. I want these to be simple and as close to flush with the body and tire as possible. In some places these covers are only mm away from the tire.
The view from above:
I cut the plastic from the long rolled form it came in such a manner that its factory-made curvature bows the cover away from the wheel a little. The plastic is rigid enough that it holds shape. It's kinda like a suspension bridge, which bows upwards away from its river.
These below images show the covers in place. I always use a combination of found in the street stuff, leftover parts, and new store-bought supplies. That's sort of a theme with this car: this Eco Rat Rod recycles bits of the road it rides on. (Some of the images appear to be getting screwy and re-oriented as I upload them, sorry.)
