How much can the fenders be trimmed , before adding tj flares, I want to trim but I don't want to trim tooo much and then not be able to not put them on

 

Put them on, mark what needs trimmed, take them off, cut. A for sure way to make sure you don't cut to much

 

I want to trim and then add them later on down the rosd

 

I like the trimmed and unflaired look, personally. Never been a TJ fender conversion fan.. But that's irrelevant cause it's your XJ man, do it up!! But, when you pull stock flares and trim, your gonna get increases road spray on your rig. I'm running flareless, haven't even trimmed, running 235 dura trac's and my drivers side is plastered with spray... Annoying.... So just consider that. Are you aware of the cut and fold method, or about the rear pinch seam? Good luck.

 

I don't know if you're going to be able to do that.

 

All depends on Florida's vehicle codes. Anyway, OP, take the factory flares off as well as their mounting brackets. Use a good amount of PB blaster on the bracket bolts, but even with this, you may still break a couple of them.

Front fender trimming:
After removing the OE flare brackets, you'll see that the fender has a slight flare on it that the bracket mounts to.


Tape off the fender at the very top of this "flare". Trim it up, file down the edge, and then prime and paint it. If you go past this line you'll run out of metal for a couple of the TJ flare bolt holes.


Rear Fender Trimming:
After removing the rear OE flares, you'll see that where the bracket mounted looks much the same as the front. However, do NOT trim this off. Instead, take a close look all along it and you'll see a bunch of little "dimples". These are your pinch welds that hold the inner and outer fenders together. Tape off the fender right at those "dimples". Cut a bunch of perpendicular lines in the fender up to your tape line. You want to space the cuts at about .5" to create a bunch of small tabs. Once that is done, tape off the fender and use a soft blow hammer to bend the tabs up into the fender.

 

I already cut all the bolts and threw out those pieces of metal behind the front fenders,

I've heard of the cut and fold method

 

I'm running 305x70x16. 32.8x12x16


Oh I love the no flare look but this pic sold me on the tj flares, also I hate the spray

 

That picture shows about hoe far away you have to stand for the tj flares to look good.lol
I just think they look bad because they dont really match the xj body lines perfectly. Im flareless and love it. But its your jeep so do it up! Before you go tj flares check out some of the homebrew flares guys on here made. Some sweet ones I just saw were made of lawn edging, I know how it sounds but it looked sweet!

 

Noo I love the lawn flares but I don't know if I can make them look as good as others

 

Has anyone tried to use rear TJ flares on the front and rear of an XJ? I think the rear flares look decent, but hate the look of the TJ front flares. I'm not knocking anyone, just saying i don't like it, but i'd like to see if anyone has rear flares on the front. If anyone has a pic, please post it, i'd love to see it.

 

Yeah, I did TJ front and rears on mine as well. If they're done right I like 'em, but most of the time they're botched. ven int eh white Xj above, I don't like that they left eh corner marker next to the headlight. To me that makes it look tacky. You can see in the pic where I painted over mine to try to blend it in more but I'll be fiberglassing it completely so it will be like it was never there.


MWildmann, look for Station_Wagon's build. She did rear TJ's on all 4 corners.