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SMOOTHED TA FENDER VENTS
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Stock TA Fender With Vent
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Ok this is what a 85 and up 3rd gen firebird fender looks like stock... (this is from Joe's project car)
You can see how poor the factory installs sit. So instead I wanted mine to sit flush!
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GFX Holes
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Also note in the above pics, the holes for the 85 and up gfx. The 84 style gfx I use, mount below the lower body line. This meant all the holes had to be welded up!
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Vent Choice
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Here is the vent...I chose to use the 82-84 style. Again, since I am using the 84 GFX, which do not come up as high on the fenders, I chose to use the 82-84 style vents. The vent hole is actually longer then the 85 and up style like Joe has mounted in his! See on the 85 and newer cars the gfx actually bolt over the bottom of the vent, so the vent hole was made shorter to accomodate this change.
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Preping for bonding
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We started with 85 and up TA repro fenders, so the ledge for the vents was already there. There was no listing for 82-84 TA fenders!
We sanded down all the E-coat to be sure of good strong adhesion.
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Bonding
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A bead of the SEM bonding adhesive was applied on the fender ledges. The adhesive we used comes in a double tube, and is applied in a special gun with a mixing tip. It looks and smells like JB weld, but it probably has different additives in it.
Then I inserted the vents, locking them in place with the original tabs.
Here it is installed...
I used a piece of straight cardboard to run around the seam to capture the excess that had squished out as well as fill in any low spots.
The idea being to do most of the seam filling with this product instead of bondo! I hoped this would add to the strenth of the bond. We noticed the vent was buldging in the rear, so weight was applied on top of the vent while the adhesive cured & set up.
After it was solid, I spread excess adhesive around the backside, then let this portion set up!
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Sanding it down smooth
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The whole thing was allowed to dry throughly. Then Joe began DA sanding with #80 grit paper on the seam. Since the vents dont fit perfect stock, there was alot of work to be done to get everything level. The excess ahesive was removed with the DA and the portions of the vents that sat higher then the fenders were sanded down level to the fender. The top front courner was the worst high spot. The rear center and top were slightly high. The bottom was low.
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Filler work
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Now we were sure to DA all the E-Coat off before applying filler...very important! Once we got it as close as we could, lightweight filler was applied to better blend the vents to the fender. As it turned out due to the stamping process the TA fender goes thru...there is actually a low spot in the fender behind the vent. The lower portion of the fender vent also took a significant amount of filler to build up to the fender level.
Used filler up on the front welded holes as well!
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Blocked
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It was blocked a few times, guidecoating it along the way to check the progress, and then was taken to our painter. He sprayed the fenders with spray poly (a Spies-Hecker product, sort of a spray on bondo). He blocked everything out, level and smooth.
The old gfx holes...
Antenna hole was shaved as well!
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Primer
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Then he primed the whole fender.
Antenne hole
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Paint
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Then he painted them.
There was a touch of buffing need on a bad spot on both fenders, but besides those small areas, no buffing was done.
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Installation
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Preping for install...
I decided the fender vents would not have a grill on them for now. I decided to paint the area that would be exposed thru the vent hole a nice gloss black!
Let's just say aftermarket fenders fit like poo! Got some adjusting to do to get things dialed in! Both fit like crap! Going to have to do some hole redrilling where the fender and bumper mount up down the road!
On the driver's side the fender sits high and the bottom body line does not match up. On the passenger side the fender actually sticks out too much at the fender bumper line. What a mess! Anyway here they are on the car!
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With my rims on!
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NOTE!
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If you did this with non-TA fenders you would still need to have a ledge of some sort, and preferably use the stock retaining clips to hold everything in place. This is were the stock pieces gets most of its rigidity and strength.
The whole thing is very solid, so hopefully we won't have any cracking problems. Only time will tell!
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HOME PAGE
Follow this link to additional information on the car not found on this site!
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DIRECTORY FOR RAIF'S EXTERIOR SITE
01 Site Intro
02 Red Window Tint
03 Red Window Vinyl
04 Stance
05 Bumper Insert Conversion
06 Ground Effects
07 Lower GFX Spoiler
08 SunCoast Hood
09 Shaving
10 Shaving Electronics
11 Antenna Relocation & Gas Tank Filler Neck Reroute
12 Headlight Conversion
13 Clear Front Turn Signals
14 Exterior Underbody Neon
15 Strobes
16 Spoiler
17 4h Gen Mirror Conversion
18 Tailights
19 Primer
20 Paint
21 Emblems
22 Smoothed TA Fender Vents <<<
23 Clear Rear Side Markers
24 Paint: Jam Touch Up
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