What hardware is used to mount the factory fender flares? I'm thinking about taking them off the paint with some krylon fusion. From what I've heard most people say, 90% of the bolts will break so I figured I should go ahead and get new hardware. Thanks in advance.

 

hit the bolts with some PB and hopefully they wont break. if you just take it slow with them they'll be fine. or just take one out w/out breaking it and take it to the hardware store to match it.

 

the hardware is a thin plate with studs on it, nuts are in the fender well.

if you have an air ratchet it helps a lot. They are small bolts and almost any force that isn't purely rotational will snap them. Also try to get the mud ect off before hand.

also, price out the brackets - I called my dealer and off road shop and they were silly expensive.

97 plus xjs mounting seems to be much weaker than the 96 -

 

and they are 10mm bolt heads

 

I pulled mine off way back to take paint off of them. Mine's a 1996. Nothing broke. Just my experience though.

 

I had good luck pulling them from both of my XJs as well. I live in CO, so not a lot of salt, so....

 

i broke all but 1 bolt on mine.. you can use any size you want on there .. they are metric but you can put whatever you want in.. maybe a 1/4 would do good.. just go to the hardware store and find some short semi skiny bolts and buy em

 

I didn't look at your info, with a 95 you use whatever bolts you want to re-attach. the plates are nifty but not necessary.

97+ need brackets cause they sandwich a tiny rib on the flair to the body.

 

I had the same idea with my 98 a while ago. I broke half of the studs. I used PB blaster, I cleaned them, I took my time, and was careful and still broke half of them. I can't weld, so I can't reweld bolts back on as suds, so I have decided not to put tthe flares back on for now.

 

I had the tire smash up and bend mine up pretty bad so when removing them I ended up snaping them off on one fender pretty bad...

 

I broke about a third of the ones on my '97. I used new bolts and welded them into the retainer strips.

You are on the right track with Fusion paint. It works great. Just clean your flares really good first.