19bonestock88's 2004 Saturn "Ion Green Line" build...

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by 19bonestock88

Looking at my car last night it dawned on me how I’m gonna mount wheel skirts... gonna make some “L” brackets out of steel strapping and screw them to my inner fenders, as I’m pretty sure the inner fenders on my car come out to the fender lip, making them an easy target... I plan to attach the skirts to the brackets with 1/4” nylon push rivets, just like on the Malibu I had...

Make sure removal is possible with ordinary tools, for the obvious reasons of emergy wheel/tire service.

[19bonestock88]

The push rivets are removable with just a flat screwdriver or butter knife but I considered making a quick removal tool from a loop of steel strapping... where I messed up on the Malibu was holding the carpet bar on with Phillips screws so it was a pain to remove the skirt before... not happening this time

[19bonestock88]

Got my wheel skirt brackets made tonight, I’m using 7 on each side, which I feel should be sufficient to hold the skirt but not take me 30min to remove in case of changing a tire...

5 brackets on each side were drilled to be held in to the inner fender by the factory push rivets and two on each side have pilot holes drilled for a self tapping screw

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by 19bonestock88

Got my wheel skirt brackets made tonight, I’m using 7 on each side, which I feel should be sufficient to hold the skirt but not take me 30min to remove in case of changing a tire...

5 brackets on each side were drilled to be held in to the inner fender by the factory push rivets and two on each side have pilot holes drilled for a self tapping screw

Pretty. Clean. Mine are ugly, dirty, and plastic, and still not mounted again! Lol

[19bonestock88]

The skirts themselves are gonna be made from cheap coroplast which I don’t think will look that great but will serve the purpose of getting me ~ 2% better mileage...

I’m also working on designing front wheel skirts, kinda like arcosine made for his SC1, planning on using half a 700C bike wheel for a reinforcement, carpet bars running across the backside for the tire to rub on during sharp cornering, and bungee cords to hold it taught against the fender...

Just gotta find an old non usable 700C wheel, I’d rather not cut up the front wheel for the hybrid bike (though I may if necessary)

[19bonestock88]

So I got the skirts cut out from the cheap coroplast, but not mounted yet due to not having mounted the brackets yet... I did tape the skirt up on the car for looks though...

I also took out all the seats for cleaning and to swap in the Recaro seats from my Redline...

EDIT: I just realized I took the photos in portrait mode... my bad lol

[mpg_numbers_guy]

Looks good!

Make sure to test them with the windows down to verify that they don't rub. I found ABA testing was a necessity with wheel skirts because apparently, at least for my car, if they stick out at all they actually slightly reduce my fuel ecnomy.

[19bonestock88]

I plan to make a stiffening rib to attach to the bottom of the skirt to hold it off the tire, it needs held out a little less than an inch to adequately clear the tire, which is less than the Malibu needed for the skirt to be beneficial... it’ll be hard to test it alone as I plan on adding more mods the longer the car is off the road... if it stays parked until spring I’m hoping for full wheel skirting and maybe a diffuser, along with a clean interior (for first time since I got the car) and better seats/steering wheel...

[mpg_numbers_guy]

Awesome!

Do you have or are you planning on doing a full underbody pan? With that you could ditch the air dam and just have front wheel spats integrated into the belly pan with a diffuser to get better fuel economy plus reduced frontal area without the air dam.

[19bonestock88]

I used to have a front and mid belly pan but they were lost last winter in the snow, never replaced... planning on remaking them later on and I’m gonna design the diffuser to tie in to a full belly pan, when I get around to building it... likely will get exhaust work before then though, to tuck it closer to the belly of the car to allow a flatter belly pan, as well as to do a larger diameter pipe and freer flowing muffler and resonator... plan on that front is to use the header from the Redline and build back from there