bush wacker chop chop

**hopefully I'm posting this in the right spot**

so i have a 2015 tacoma with a icon mid travel suspension which is cranked up to roughly 3" of lift. i have some 33X12.5 mickey thompson baja claws along with some bushwacker pocket flares. needless to say they don't get along very well.


so i plan to take 2" off the flare, I'm going to cut it out and either fiberglass or plastic weld the bottom edge back on and HOPEFULLY it looks like it was meant to be that way

then the fenders and box sides will get trimmed as well.

ill keep the process documented as well as i can!


you can see my sharpie line where the fun will start

 

the fun part has begun. I'm going to also chop and reweld the cab mount further back, along with beating back the pinch weld also.



so far it looks like ill be able to clear without having to beat the lower body in further, really want to keep as much as i can stock. one its all don't and cleared up ill wire wheel it and shoot some por-15 down to prevent any rust as the roads are heavily salted during the winters


looks like it all will clear once the fenders, flares, and front bumper is trimmed. would like to lower the front a bit once i get it all done to get a little less angle on the from CV shafts.

 

What was the issue?
Rubbing?

 

yeah it rubbed at full turn, and I'm not really happy with the ride quality since the shock is turned up so high, id like to drop it a inch and a half or so, maybe turn the adjustment on the shock way down and put a 1" spacer on top allowing it to ride smoother and have more travel up and down at normal ride height. and not to mention i have 12k miles on the truck and my cv boots are all beat up from the angle. may do a diff drop also before its all done with

 

I did 2.5" on mine, have stage4 Icons
I do have a little rub against my fenders when I'm 4wheelin, normal street is fine.
best of luck,

 

Following

 

started on the other side tonight, did the same thing with the pinch weld and cab mount. also dug around to find my stock flares to put on for the mean time while i work over the bushwackers so i can still drive my truck since it is my daily.


also got a fender back on, took a good chunk out of it with a cut of wheel, and put some notches in it and started bending it over. i don't want to go all out on it until the flares are closer to being done since i need to drive the truck. this will atleast give me a idea whether i need to take more or if it clears the way it is. I'm going to mock up the oem flares to slap back on there for a while until my bushwackers are closer to being done.

 

Sub'd

 

started on the flare itself tonight. the more i got to thinking about it, if i plan to take 2" out of it total, i can't cut exactly two inches into the flare from the bottom, because i need to re-work the bottom piece back into the flare to keep the structure of it. so i redid my lines and did 2.5" up from the bottom/inside the flare, and .5" inside the flare leaving 2" in the center to get cut out.



once i got it cut out, i lined up the bottom edge on the front side of the flare, and took a 36 grit disk and roughed up each edge to get the paint off, then took a plastic welder/soldering iron with a flat tip and slowly started to melt it together just so it will hold to get it all mocked up. i stopped for the night right about where I'm going to cut the center piece, and then start from the bottom of the back side and work my way back up, hopefully i can keep the gap in a flatter spot so its not so hard to patch.

 

got the outside all lined up, and plastic welded together. i ended up cutting the inside piece into thirds and again tried cutting it in straight sections so it will be easier to patch.




i cleaned and sanded the since of the flare once i flipped it over, this first one is really a experiment to see how it holds, anyone that has delt with repairing plastic, fiberglass resin doesn't stick to it, might for a short while but eventually the vibration from being on the truck will cause it to crack where the glass meets plastic.

with that being said, I'm going to try "evercoat smc fiberglass resin", I've used it several times in the past at work and figured id give it a shot here since it is suppose to stick to plastic or so it claims. I'm going to do one flare, let it fully set up and see how it holds, Im just looking for some structure for the flare since i do encounter some tight trails and the last thing i want is crack a flare from bumping into a branch.



laid down a coat of the resin, then laid out my matting and started dabbing it down until it all was covered and laying flat.

 

Watching.