The epic build thread

[Beatbox]

Well hopefully this thread will live up to its name, and I have a feeling it will. As some of you know I built a custom turbo setup for my 1986 190e 2.3-16v several years ago and while I'm still satisfied with the amount of power, I felt like the rest of the car needed to be updated in order improve handling, braking, and acceleration. The car needed more tire and a better selection of them. This led me to the realization that I needed to clearance the fenders and get flares. Now I could have tracked down a set of evo1 or evo2 flares from Germany, spent a ridiculous amount for them, and hope that my desired tire size would fit. I didn't want to go that route so I decided to take a chance and make my own.

I first started out by selecting the tires and mocking it up on the car. I decided on 255/40/17" Falken Azenis RT-615 all the way around. These tires are a good balance between street and track use, and they're a fairly inexpensive.

Here is the car with the Azenis mounted on both my rear wheels (17x9") for mock up purposes only. It was very apparent that the tires did not fit. As you can see in the pictures, the front fender was sitting on the tire (normally sat 1.5” lower in the front), and the rear barely fit as well.




Laid out my cut lines, and also shed a few tears as I was about to cut into my mint 16v.




Once the inner plastic well is removed, the front was very easy to clearance.



The rear required more work to gain the needed clearance. Once I cut through the outer quarter panel, I then had to pull the inner wheel well up to the new cut line. This required some careful massaging from the tool of choice, Mr. dead-blow. The edge was then welded back together along the seam, and then carefully ground flush.




This is after clearancing. I removed the springs from the car and used the lift to lower the car down and make sure the tires had enough room for compression. It's sitting lower in this picture than I plan to have it, but it looked good regardless!



I then made spacers to move the wheels slightly out for the mock up process. These were needed for several reasons. The first being the need for more clearance in the front inner wheel well when turning, and the second being clearance for the front coil over’s. This left me with a final wheel offset of 17x9” +20 front and rear.

Now came the fun part of this project, shaping the fender flares out of modeling clay. I sourced the clay from a company called Chavant (great guys to work with btw). This is the same clay used by almost all automakers for proto-types and concepts. After some discussion with the Chavant rep, I was advised to use their CM-50 line. The main difference between this clay and normal clay that we're all familiar with is that it's very firm at room temperature. It requires being heated to 120-130 degrees in order to be applied to your work piece. Once cooled to room temperature it's scraped, raked, or milled into the desired shape. This allows for very fine detail and refinement to be achieved. As you can see in the pictures, I used the Mercedes evo1 for my inspiration.











I am much further along now, and will post the rest when I get more time.

Enjoy!

[16V4NRBRGR]

Wow, now that is really freakin' cool!:drool1:

[202brabus]

Damn! Looks good!

[2.3euro190]

noice! excellent work

[intense1]

That's totally bitchen man! MORE PICS!!!! MORE PICS!!!

[Beatbox]

Thank you guys!
And I promise a ton of pictures yet to come, within the next day or two. Can't spoil all the fun right now. lol

[firefirefire90]

wow you did amazing work with that. Nice clay work! What is going to be the next step? cool project dude!!!!

[Beatbox]

Ok, here's a time lapse of me shaping on the rear flare. It was about a half an hour, and you can see that not much changes during the time lapse. This gives you an idea of the amount of time that I've invested in this project, and still have left to complete it.

YouTube - Mercedes Benz 190E fender flare clay modelling

[Robstibz]

Awesome stuff! They're looking great.

Any thoughts on eventually making sets? As you probably know, evoI fenders are probably the most sought after items for our babies.

[Glen]

Nice work! What are you planning to make the flares out of? CF or fiberglass?

[TurboBenz]

Wow Jacob, awesome. It's good to see you back.

[george3soccer]

Beautiful love it.

[mike919]

Holy shit did he just MAKE some sexy Evo1 fenders!!


the epicness of this thread is crazy already cant wait to see more

[Beatbox]

The flares will be laid up out fiber glass. I could use carbon, but there really wouldn't be any point. The weight savings would be minimal, and I would never leave them bare carbon on this car. I plan to paint them to match the body.

Turbobenz, good to hear from you too! I still poke around these forums and plan to be more involved. You ever get your car running under boost?

Oh, and I'm really undecided if I'll make any for sale at the moment.

Thanks everyone, I've needed the motivation!

[meareweird]

All i can say is WOW!! and if you can get a company to sell a bodykit of your final product I know there will be many interested people! Also coilovers! seems we have several people jumping into those full steam ahead.

[flucking gleek]

Epic

[FLYNAVY]

Awesome man, looks great. Can't wait to see updates!

[Sean]

dude! nice! couldn't agree more with the thread title :) nice job

[veedubfreak86]

cant wait to fallow this thread, epic gets thrown around these days like extreme use to but this thread looks like it will live up to the name

[202brabus]

Originally Posted by veedubfreak86

cant wait to fallow this thread, epic gets thrown around these days like extreme use to but this thread looks like it will live up to the name

Damn right! This IS EPIC:drool1: