Topic: Taking fender flares off

[GreenBayjeeper]

Hey all,
I did a quick search and came up empty, so here goes.
I want to paint my fender flares.  I dug out the ole 8mm closed end, and ratchet but to my dismay the bolts just spin in place.  The threaded metal inserts are rusted to the bolts.
Is there a way to get them off of there?  Or should I just mask everything off and rattle can them in place?
Thanks guys!

[Jeffy]

IIRC, those bolts that go into the firewall can be reached from the inside.

[GreenBayjeeper]

Yep.  I can get the front ones if I use a vise-grips..  most of them anyway.  The small ones by the rockers have two of those bolts that are unreachable though.  I haven't even looked at the rears.

[stan98tj]

i had a bitch of a time taking mine off. i had to remove the little flare bit that comes under the door in order to put up the diamond plate sides and i found myself just spinning freely-vice grips helped and then i finally got two off and just spun it around and popped it off. they went back on a bolt short on both sides but its not noticable at all.

[stan98tj]

i had a fruit cups of a time taking mine off.

fruit cups? fruit cups? really? i dont think i've ever used that term in my life lol
 

[GreenBayjeeper]

Fruit cups indeed. hahahaah
So the surgery was a success.  I removed the front two flares and painted them in the garage.  Well next to the garage, cause I need to clean the garage.
I removed the passenger side rocker one, and painted it.  Actually I did that first as a test piece.
The driver side one wouldn't come off.  The screws just spun and two of the three are completely unreachable.  From the back that is. And that's where the vice grips would have to go.
So it got painted in place.  Masked everything off, and it worked out pretty good.
Rears were equally un-removable, so more masking.
Krylon Fusion for plastic; dark gray textured shimmer.  They look real nice.
It makes me wonder however, how the hell do you remove the rears if you want to put Bushwhackers on?

[dtoliver]

i had the same problem buddy, so i ended up painting mine in place. first time i used dupli-color trim paint and even after prepping the plastic the paint ran. so never use that! i ended up redoing it with krylon fusion and it turned out well. i wanted to put some bushwackers on eventually, but now I dont even wont to mess with those things anymore!

[GreenBayjeeper]

Right there with you man.  Those things ain't going nowhere!

[John OB]

The screws on the inner fender (front and rear) are pretty easy but there is a rectangular plastic block that they screw into that may spin on ya,  I held those with a plier.  The front lower flares were a bear with the spinning little inserts.  I ground the heads off, removed the flare and then finished by grinding the insert lip off and popping them out.  I didn't put my stock flares back on but if I do I'll probably use a better arraingement, like maybe torx screws 

[GBJeep]

That plastic square nut is a PITA.  I took them off when I painted the Jeep and put them back on with hex head screws and nuts.  It made the install a lot easier.  The inserts on the side all broke on me and required the use of a grinder to get thos off.  I would not take them off if you do not have to. 

[TN00TJ]

Went through all this nonsense last July. The first time I painted my flares, I did it "in situ" and hated the result. No matter how hard you try, one or more of the flares is installed so tightly that you are just not going to get any masking material behind them, resulting in some overspray. Some guys don't mind, others (we anal-retentive, detail-oriented, control freaks) are driven coo-coo by overspray.

Bit of history here...those blind fasteners are called "rivnuts" for rivet-nut. Some of you guys know them by the term "nutsert" but they are actually an old WWII airplane fastener that got ordered and used over time by another war materiel supplier - JEEP. There is a difference. Incidentally, I've never seen a rivnut on an airplane or Jeep that was any count. They're junk whose only value is  to get fairings or other lightly stressed components installed in a hurry in the production environment.

The problem the TJ flares have, partiularly on the front ones, is that there's so little room to wield a cutoff wheel inside the flare because the "backside" of the wheel runs so closely to the flare itself.  Forget unthreading the fastener (bolt, capscrew, whatever you like to call it) so you're going to have to cut or grind the bolt head off. Having done that the flare slips right off - easy, huh?

What I finally discovered was a Dremel cutoff wheel, about 3/4" in diameter running right down through the bolt head as though you were going to turn it into a straight-slot screw. Now here comes the nasty part...once you've cut the first slot, rotate the hex head about 90 degrees and cut another slot. Then rotate again and cut the third one. Now, with just that much metal missing, you can use a cobalt burr to grind the head down to the stem. Those little capscrews are so hard that to just try grinidng would result in two or three ruined burrs by the time you got all the way around the Jeep.

Once you've got the flare off, then you can carefully grind the rivnut and fastener stem so you're almost down to the fender.  At that pont, you can easily knock the rivnut into the body with a 4 oz ballpeen and a drift punch.

Then, when you're ready to put it all back together, you can ream the holes to fit nutserts and assemble everything with new hardware.

[stan98tj]

and i didnt even take the actual flares off...i had trouble with the little "flarlette" behind the forward flares....now i have em back on and both sides are minus one screw...doesnt bother me at all.