GTR Stagea - Starting the Fenders (Patreon)

The goal after getting the bonnet and front bumper fitted was to get started on honestly probably the most challenging part of this whole build, stitching the GTR panels onto the Stagea ones.Luckily I had 2 sets of Stagea fenders thanks to the donor so I got started by cutting away material on that to leave only the important parts I was going to need for the new fenders: The door line and lower mounting points, and the mounting points for the upper rail along the bonnet line.With the Stagea fenders cut I could start marking out where I was going to have to trim on the GTR fenders.One of the things that makes my conversion different to the existing swaps that people have done, is that instead of using the whole GTR fender and changing the lines of the Stagea to work with it, I wanted to keep the lines of the Stagea instead. This might not look as good to some people, but the point with my conversion is to make a kit that doesn't require the entire car to be re-bodyworked and painted.Because of that I decided to trim the entire vent section off the GTR and opted to make my own with the Stagea fender.Another thing I had to change for my version compared to others, was I wanted the angle of the bodyline that comes down this vent to be a bit steeper. The GTR has very long guards and so the line is quite shallow, but to work with where the new wheel is I wanted the center of the arch a bit further back and so the line had to be adjusted.once I had that all good I used panel screws to hold everything in place and then double checked all the gaps and made sure that all the bodylines worked well with each other.Once I had everything perfectly lined up I tack welded the panels together. I set the welder as cold as I could get away with and did my welds intermittently around the whole panel to avoid putting too much heat into any one area and warping the metal.With the outside of the panel welded together I could shift my focus to the upper mounting point. In order to get the GTR fender to line up with the hood the upper mounts had to be trimmed off. The new fenders sat out much further than the Stagea ones and so some extra steel was welded on as an extension.With that last bit of welding done the first panel was finally all in one piece.Because the panel was only partially welded however, and there was a lot of tension in the piece from how it was all held together. I decided to apply a few heavy layers of fiberglass to the back side of the fender and then leave it to set once back on the car.Doing this meant that as well as reinforcing all the unwelded pieces of steel that would probably move around when I started to apply filler, this fiberglass has set the flare into an incredibly rigid shape meaning that when it comes time to make moulds, I can make them off the car and not have to worry about them being at all twisted or deformed.But the biggest thing about finishing the first fender was that now I had a width I could use for measurements and finally order some wheels for this project.I played around with these spacings until I had around 25mm poke from the GTR fenders. I figured this would be the minimum thickness I would need in order to make a nice looking set of overfenders to go on top of these flares.Using these offsets I was also able to get my first look at how wide the rears would need to be.Honestly not too bad. It ended up being around 65mm wider than stock on the rear which feels like a good increase in width without going as extreme as my MX5's +100mm widebody.The following week I was able to get a fair bit of work done despite being sick and unable to do anything for a few days.Started off by quickly smashing out the second fender. This one went together in no time since I'd figured out where to make all my cuts and I new how it all matched up.With that I officially had both fenders welded up and with fiberglass reinforcement to help keep them rigid when it comes time to make the moulds.With the metal work now all finished I could start sanding the panels begin the long and tedious shaping process.Overall I'm really happy with how things are looking.