I know it has been a long time since this has been discussed, so has anyone come up with a reasonable way to fix this problem with their Vertical Door kits? It drives me nuts that my fenders keep popping out and jamming my doors.

 

The bodyshop that installed mine, after spending numerous hours getting the hinges on (no matter how much you elongate the holes there was no way they would line up) I had the same problem. There was a little piece left of the inner fender, so they welded a 1/8" rod to that left over piece and shaped it to the shape of the fender. It reinforces it, but doesn't stick out far enough to interfere with the hinge.

I'll try and get pics to better explain it.

 

Thanks Rix, Glad I sent my VDI kit back and got the replacement. Took me just a couple of hours to install by myself, no problems. smile.gif Now it's just an issue of the fender flex. I noticed that if the hinge rubs on the fender at all, it makes it much worse. I left a part of the inner fender as well, and it rubs a little. I need to pull the fenders back off and roll the inner fender a little bit to fix this.

 

You know, I think it really has to do with how much is trimmed off the fender liner to determine how much flex there will be. I would highly recommend for daily drivers to somehow reinforce the fender to stay put, while not interferring with the VDI hinge. It DOES make all the difference in the world to have the new kits installed versus the ones from the first year of production. Now they're friggin perfect, but it still brings up the issue of OEM metal fenders moving around after driving. If it was for show cars that barely got any use, it wouldn't matter, but as hard as I push my cars through 90MPH California freeway interchanges, the car will flex no matter what I do to the metal fender. When you have a FG fender, or CF fender, you'll never have that problem, because they dont bend, and unbend, they just are what they are. My RD1 with CF fenders has no issues of the fenders moving around after driving, whereas the metal OEM fenders on my RD2 get in the way of the doors after some hard driving. All you can do is reinforce the metal like stated above, or just get some FG or CF fenders and mount them perfectly. The metal fenders are thin and hold the shape that they temporarily bend into when the car flexes, whereas the non metal fenders cant retain the new shape even if the car twists and rolls. They just go back to their original shape.

 

Well, I HAVE fiberglass fenders, but they are the Erebuni ones and fit like shit. They could work with some modification, but still had issues with hitting the doors partly because of the fitment issues. Considering I have an aftermarket hood, bodykit, and VDI, I figured it would be safest to just go with a part that is between all of this that fits correctly. I'll have to see about reinforcing it. I love the look of aftermarket fenders, too bad these babies fit so poorly. Maybe I'll have to throw them back on and see if they "flex" any worse than the metal ones and see if it would be better to try and correct the fitment issues and not worry as much about the flex problem....

 

I think chris is right that new cf or fiberglass fenders are the only way to go cause me and the body shop have tried everything possible to get it stiffer and its just not cutting it. Although the new kits helped i would definately try to buy fenders at the same time or when you go to put them on trim the fenders small amounts at a time due to the more you take the worse it gets. This is my main problem so i will probably be in the market for some cf fenders in the distant future.