There’s a pretty decent market for them if you could sell them for around 1k to 1200. OEM miata hardtops sell for about 900 bucks for one in great condition, so meeting that average pricepoint would make people more inclined to go with the one that makes their car look much better. The one in the picture costs 2200 bucks plus shipping, paint, etc.
I don’t think I could hit $1200 on something like that. That’s a HUGE layup…would take two to three sets of hands to make it because I don’t have a chopper-gun (expensive)…and then there’s the glass (or equivalent)…I could probably mold one if I had access to it, and then farm out the work like I plan to do with the focus RS stuff…but the glass is still an issue.
Long story short…the fender molds are garbage. now that the parts are out of the mold and mocked up on the car, it’s painfully obvious that the molds were made on damaged fenders. holding lamps a few feet away and examining from a few different angles you are able to see creases that had existed in the metal fender when the molds were made. What this resulted in is changing the angle of the nose of the fender where it meets the headlight and bumper…rendering the molds and the fenders that were to come from them useless. (don’t fret, I have a plan…not excited about it, but I have a plan)
Pics of how bad fitment is:
as you can see, fitment around the headlight is NOWHERE NEAR CLOSE
my new gameplan is to cut about an inch above the flair on these fiberglass fenders, and then set them over the stock metal fenders I took off the car and trace the cut line. I’m going to utilize the entire top part of the stock fenders so that fitment/gaps along the hood line and headlight are OEM, and fuse/blend the RS flairs onto that piece to achieve a replica RS fender. Then I’m going to make a fresh mold from the corrected fenders. This really sucks asshole because of what I spent on these molds…but it’s still cheaper than OEM focus RS sheetmetal parts and at least I can recoup losses by selling replicas after the molds are corrected. At least then I can rest assured that the parts I produce and sell will fit CORRECTLY.
I guess saturday morning is when I’ll be tackling it…as I won’t have the time until then.
Looks lyke an race carz!
Who makes molds using screwed up fenders? :tdown:
Sounds good about the the fix, though. Good luck with it.
:word:
WTF. Keep at it though :tup:
I’m mostly freaking because I REALLY want to bring this to the BBQ. I may or may not be bringing it missing rear glass, no paint, various patches of primer/bodyfiller/etc. and haggard as fuck in progress lol.
If it drives, who cares if it has body panels on it our not. You can still track it!
I’m looking at these pictures, wouldn’t BOLTING them onto the car get them to fit right? I know the ones on my datsun didn’t sit right just sitting there but once they were bolted down they were perfect.
Are you looking at the pictures with your eyes or your brown eye?
We bolted them on last night. They are still way off. You can tell looking at the genders they almost have a kink to them a bit towards the headlight part. I think the idea of using the oem fender for the most part and feather in the flare will work out in the end
these pictures are taken with them bolted in place and forced as closely to fitting as possible. the pictures are the end result after filing mounting holes into notches and pulling everything as close to where it’s supposed to be as possible. in the one picture you can almost see the kink…
I’ll MSpaint where it is
[ATTACH=CONFIG]21639[/ATTACH]
fenders*
okay that makes sense, i thought that pice on the bottom right of the new fender bolted up under the headlight
Damnit!
Well that’s your problem, you’re trying to fit male fenders on female mounts!
Do you need anything from France? I’ll be here another 6 hours.
Checko came by today and gave me a hand with the fenders… cut up the stock ones and the fiberglass ones and used pieces of each one to get a good-fitting fender. gameplan is to make these fit and look right, then mold them, and make complete fiberglass fenders out of the mold so I don’t have to worry about the seam cracking from vibration or expansion/contraction.
driver’s side is epoxied together and pop-riveted, ran out of epoxy so the passenger side is just held in alignment temporarily with self tapping screws
Looks awesome :tup: kinda sad to see the body getting all cut up but it’s deff worth it!
well, I’m starting to think I need to try to find someone with genuine RS front fenders and try to borrow them for molding purposes. This is turning into a clusterf*(%
Mounted the bumper…NEWS FLASH! The RS fender’s nose is much more “flat” than the standard fender(which has a bit of a curve to it)
pic from below:
so I traced the line of the bumper, and went at the fender with the grinder to cut the curve out of it. Then I welded a flat patch behind it so I could smooth it all out with fiberglass and body filler.
definitely not excited about how it’s coming out right now, and would MUCH MUCH rather re-mold an OEM genuine (not dented to piss) RS fender set. Fantastic, I’ll have to do this all over again on the passenger side. :-/
