how to make skirts for plastic wheel arches?
 

i've noticed a lot of budget cars have plastic wheel arches that stick out a bit from the side of the car. i assume this is to shield the aerodynamically dirty wheels from air flow. would wheel skirts made any difference here? since it seems like it has already been thought out by the manufacturer.

i was hoping to make wheel skirts using sticky back plastic but it wont stick to the rough textured plastic arches. any ideas?

Have photos?

I'm thinking back to the 84 VW Golf/Rabbit GTI. They added plastic cladding around the GTI wheel arches because it had wider 14 inch tires than the stock 13's the base car came with.

If that's the case you're facing, I'd be more inclined to keep my eyes open for a set of rims I could use the narrower tires on, and remove the frontal area-aggravating cladding! (And then put skirts on)

If that's not likely, seems to me that plastic is an ideal material to drill into and either fasten brackets, or screw directly through the skirt, since it's not going to have rust problems the way going through sheet metal might.

see how the arches stick out. i tried tape before but it looked poor and came off.

i have learned from a car forum that the plastic wheel arches can be removed easily. therefore i am planning to take the arches off and ducktape all the way round to the back to create my wheel skirts -a proper job :)

Don't forget to treat the metal edges behind the plastic before you do anything... chances are, that plastic is there because there is an unsealed seam behind it, and it wasn't properly rolled by the OEM. (God, I hate the "save a buck" mentality in building cars today...)

i forgot to say that i'm gonna tape the plastic arches and then put them back on the vehicle. more accessibility = better tape job

depending on price, maybe you could get some new arches (used arches) and mold some covers to them? that way you could have two sets, or just have a good set of moulded covers and sell off the old arches, but you wouldn't have to drive around without the arch covers while you were doing the work... of course, you should test that they're going to do what you want them to do first.