Enlarging Wheel Wells - Mar 26, 2007

The slicks we chose were 12 x 30 Good years and the Monza rear wheel wells needed to be enlarged. This was a very scary project indeed. I have done some minor body work over the years but nothing that required a major panel overhaul. I have tried to weld on body panels and ended up with a warped up mess. I first needed to remove the stock inner wheel tubs. Remember anytime you are removing panels or metal structure you need to level and stabilize the car other wise the body could sag on you. I chose to install my chassis and cage to hold my car strait. At this point I used a small light weight panel saw and a 3 ½” air cutter to carefully remove the stock inner wheel tub. I went ahead and trimmed out the ½” inner wheel opening lip to add tire clearance. When I finish enlarging the wheel well opening I will weld a ¼” bar around the backside of the opening lip of the new wheel well I cut the bulk of the stock wheel tub out and went back in and finished trimming and grinding the rest out. Now I get back to enlarging the wheel wells. I found some instructions on another website and tried my best to copy them. The first thing I did was figure out how much extra room I needed for my tires. To give me some extra in case I wanted to go larger on the slicks I figured 3” in the front and 3” in the rear. I would wait and see how much I needed to raise the wheel lip so I can slip the tire past the brake caliper for installation of the wheel. I started out by using a large square to draw a channel around the current wheel opening. I drew the cut lines far enough from the wheel opening to clear the style line of the wheel opening. In other words I made the cuts in the closest but flattest area of the quarter so it would be easier to fit the pieces later.