It's been over a month since Kate became street-legal and I've taken a well deserved break! For the longest time, I felt like I had a gun to my head and couldn't stop or let up until I passed the DMV process.
I have a few small things to do to "finish up"...if any of our cars are
ever finished! I'm having my front fender brackets powder coated tomorrow and a friend, Jeremy, will corner weight and align the car this Saturday. I have a CADD drawing of the "7" grill that needs a little work before I take it to have water-jet cut...no rush on that, but it
will give Kate a more finished look.
I scoured this site to see how everyone else made their front fender brackets and that helped me figure out how to do my brackets. All photos that I found were helpful to a degree, but I thought I'd try to add a bit more detail and a few more photos of what I did with hopes that this may be helpful to others in the future. So here's what I did in great detail:
Using Miata spindles, I cut four lengths of 3/4" diameter thick-wall tubing (two 1" and two 2" pieces.) I then bought four M10x1.25 case-hardened bolts (two 2.5" long bolts locally and two 3.5" bolts that I tracked down in Massachusetts via the internet.)
Attachment:
Spacers with bolts.jpg
I removed the caliper bolts and replaced them with the longer bolts using the 1" and 2" tubing pieces like spacers.
Attachment:
Caliper bolts.jpg
I experimented with the spacers...this picture shows the 2" spacer at the top, but it ended up being used on the bottom:
Attachment:
Spacers in wrong position.jpg
Fenders: I wanted aluminum and bought my front fenders from "Fenders 'N More" in California. As previously mentioned, I bought round top, .090 aluminum, 9" wide fenders specifically for my 205/50-15 tires. Unlike most people, I wanted to use the
whole fender rather than cut them shorter...it's amazing how much crap flies off the tires even on a nice, flat, clean road, and I wanted as much protection as I could get! I bought a 3/4" wide x 1/4" thick steel bar and cut four pieces 11" long.
Attachment:
Thick bars and thin template.jpg
After a terrible job trying to bend the thick bars using a vice and hammer, I bent a thinner 'prototype' out of a 3/4" x 1/8" bar that fit nicely to the curved underside shape of the fender. This bar came out of the side of the fender about 4". I took the four 1/4" thick bars to my local Midas shop and they used their massive hydraulic ram to easily bend the bars into the same shape as my prototype.
Attachment:
Checking fit of the bars.jpg
Placing the fenders on the top of the wheels, I determined about where I wanted the bars to be bolted onto the fenders. I found that with proper placement, I could weld straight pieces of 3/4" thick walled tubing directly from the bottom (longer) spacer to the end of the 4" long bars that stuck out the sides of the fender. (No tube bending needed!) Once I had this figured out, I marked the bar locations for both fenders, drilled holes through the fenders and the bars, then tapped the bars. I bought eight stainless 1/4x20 hex head bolts at the local hardware store to attach the bars to the underside of the fenders.
I sliced off several thicknesses off of a 2x4 to use as wooden spacers between the tire and the fender to determine how far off the tire I wanted the fender (and used string to hold them into position.)
Attachment:
2x4 spacers.jpg
Initially, I wanted to have enough space to be able to change the tire without removing the fender (which makes perfect sense, right?) But I saw that if I lifted the fender up on both ends enough for the tire to clear, the center of the fender was WAY higher than the ends and looked strange. After much thought and playing, I decided that I would rather have it to look good than be practical...so my fender placement over the tire now looks GREAT, but I will have to take a minute to remove the four fender bolts in order to remove a front wheel. (Now that I'm all done, I'm fine with that decision!)
Once I found the right thickness of 2x4 between the tire and fender, I rotated the fender down and set it on top of a 3.5" high box.
Attachment:
3.5 inch box spacer.jpg
This position looked good on the front, but VERY low on the back, however I found that, I'm
still getting crap flung up off the tires, so I may need to find a way to attach a rubber strip along the bottom as a fender flap for even more protection!
Attachment:
Box spacer for bottom of fender.jpg
After determining the final fender positioning on the tire, I cut lengths of the 3/4" thick-wall pipe to run from the bottom spacer to the top and bottom bars coming out the side of the fenders. I used the bottom spacer to come off of for both bars. I then coped the bottom of these tubes so I could get a good weld between the spacer and the tube and then held the top of the tube up to the bars and used a magic marker to mark the proper angle so I could weld the tube to the bottom of each bar. (I hope I'm making sense...it's hard to remember everything in detail!) Repeat for the other fender.
Tom's welding is so superior to mine, I asked him to tack and weld everything for me while I held everything in place. This only took 15-20 minutes.
Attachment:
R+L Brackets welded.png
I'm very pleased with the outcome and the road test was perfect. There's very little clearance between the fender and the tires, but there's consensus that this is not a problem. (NOTE: These pics were taken before I ground the attachment points nice and smooth!)
Attachment:
Top bracket.jpg
Attachment:
Bottom bracket.jpg
Attachment:
Top and Bottom bracket view.jpg
As I can only use 12 pics per post, I'll have to finish in a second post...if interested, keep reading!
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Heck, the basic iconic shape has been around since the 60's and you could even argue that it looks to the untrained eye like an older MG and others going back even further. 
