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Subject How to roll your quarters with the Eastwood Fender Roller
     
Posted by Milo (SATX) on April 04, 2010 at 12:22 AM
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Message I put this together because I am tired of seeing guys use a damn baseball bat to roll their fenders. For the record, it's a bad idea. It looks like crap and you will most likely crack your paint all to hell and end up with an ugly finished product in the end.

I am doing this 101 using an Eastwood Fender Roller. It's available for around $250 or sometimes even for rent in your area if you check craigslist or this forum to see if someone has one. This is the recommended tool...hands down.

SPECIAL NOTES AND A WORD OF WARNING - Before you begin to roll a quarter, check to see if the quarter has not been repaired before. You can usually spot this pretty obviously with butt welds or an extra layer of sheetmetal that looks suspiciously thicker than normal. The process for a replaced quarter is to take the damaged quarter and cut out all the face sheetmetal, then simply take your new panel and lay it over the area. This makes for an "okay" repair and is common in the world of body repair BUT it makes for a small amount of extra work needed when rolling a quarter. Basically this just means you will not be able to go as agressive as you would with the normal amount of overlapping sheetmetal. This can also make for a little bit of a pain when replacing a quarter later, but to each their own. I personally think it's not the end of the world just needs to be re-rolled once new repaired quarter goes on. With that warning in place....let's begin.


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Tools you will need -
The Eastwood Fender Roller, 1 heat gun, a way of jacking up the rear, tools to removed wheels and lugs....and masking tape.


Start off by jacking up the car to your preferred manor. I used a set of hack stands as this is a pretty simple procedure.


Here is a picture of the Eastwood Roller and a heat gun that I prefer. The heat gun is a simple Black and Decker but any with a locking pin should be fine.

This is a ruler that I used to demonstrate the angle of potential hit of the tire to quarter. I plan on dropping the car with progressive springs here soon and the rolling should be some good preventative maintenance. Notice the point of the quarter's flush area in relation to the tire side wall. Once we drop this vehicle, and depending on suspension travel, we run the risk of bottoming out and chewing up the quarters. After we roll the quarter this risk will greatly be reduced.

Another side shot.

Now that we've got the car in the air and determined how aggressive we want to go on our rolling we start to mask off the area. Masking off the area does two things for us. It allows for a better dissipation of heat across the commonly seen quarter as well as preventative prep as to not heat and warp the paint. Warping paint can happen to first timers at this, so this is one simple step to help the process to be a bit more forgiving.

I mask off the area on the quarter that is normally seen as I want this the most protected area and area that we truly do not want to mess up with heat to paint distortion or warping/burning. I overlapped the masking tape to add a multi-layer of protection. I highly recommend green or blue tape as this has worked for me in the past, stay away from duct tape or really any other tape as they tend to leave a residue or even worse....bake into the clear requiring hours of clean up.

Notice that I masked of the outside of the quarter but not the lip or the inside. This is important. By doing this, you are exposing the sensitive area to paint cracking as you will begin to fold the sheetmetal up and towards the inside. As we put heat on and off of this area in waves, it will eventually heat up the paint making it more flexible but remember...the older the paint the more chance of less flexability in the paint and thus greater chance of paint cracking. Just a fair warning.

Now we will fit on the Eastwood Roller to the hub. The Eastwood Roller is pretty much a universal tool that fits to all hubs, for the most part. You will mount over the rotor as so. Follow the roller with the spacer washers supplied with the tool and lastly your lug nuts. Torque them down to 30 foot pounds.

Okay now that the roller is in place, we will need to prep the quarter with a bit of heat. Hook up your heat gun and begin to put some heat onto the quarter. BE WARNED!!!! Do not keep the gun in an area for more than a second or two, instead work the entire quarter in a swooping manner trying to heat it up as one whole piece all at once. This, if done right, should take around 7-10 minutes or so. Concentrate on the edge as this will be the point where the paint will be most stressed. The quarter should very warm to the touch, but not to the point it will burn your fingers.

This is the tension bar. Depending on the way your turn it, this will bring in the tool towards you or push it out. To start you simply want to barely get it touching to the body with the desired delrin angle.


This is a great start position for the delrin roller on the first time pass. Almost flush with the quarter but not aggressive. Remember that this is a process that takes many passes to get a clean desired effect.

This is the first and best start position for the 300zx quarter. This is the most fully extended portion the arm.

You want to start working your way from the rear to the front of the car, IN SMALL INCH BY INCH SECTIONS, working your way to the front. After your first completed pass remember to reheat up the paint a bit to keep it warm and flexible.

After about 20 minutes of re-adjustments and finding my desired angle of fold I finished it off with this angle. It was enough to get the final desired effect I was looking for.

Finally, simple remove the tool. Then remove your masking tape and clean off any residue. If you payed attention and took your time, you should have an amazing finished product.


Okay, so no more baseball bats guys. If I see you using a baseball bat again I'll fly out to your house and beat you death with said baseball bat.


Good luck and hope this helped someone out there

     
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