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PART 16

A CERTAIN FLARE

Oscar’s stock rims and tyres are long gone, and have been replaced by a set of 31in MTRs. We’ve lifted the X-90 up enough to get these safely under the body, but there’s still the issue of width... 10.5 inches of it!

From behind, the X-90 looks a bit like a dinky, with rubber hanging out everywhere, so we really need to get that excess rubber covered up and legal. There are various ways you can do this, ranging from going all out and getting your guards flared and rolled, or you can lob on down to Bunnings and grab a roll of garden edging and rivet that on. Basically, there’s something for every budget.

I thought about getting the guards flared, but it was pointed out to me that I was literally extending the body out into harms way, making it easier to scrape on a rock or tree... and metal is more expensive to fix than rubber. The garden-edging didn’t really appeal to me as I wanted Oscar to still retain his charming good looks (excuse me while I throw something at a co-worker who just sniggered) so I did what anyone would do in this situation... went looking for a good, cheap and easy option.

Bushranger came to the rescue with a well known product called Flexy Flares. This stuff has been proven over the years to be the easiest and most practical solution to keeping your rubber legal… and that flicked-up mud from your front tyres out of your face. It only takes a couple of hours to fit, you only need a drill and a mate to help you, and it looks good.

Now, forgetting that the last set of Flexy Flares I fitted were onto Stimpy the Monster Jimny (who had lovely soft plastic guards), and that there was enough room to fit them without having to remove the wheels and the other half was helping me, I decided I’d just lob in and do it all on my own. Bad move…

First mistake was not reading the instructions. Second was not removing the wheels… and the third was totally forgetting that when the guards were cut and rolled, I ended up with a thick, double skin on the guard lips. After repeated attempts at trying to get the self tapping screws through the double lip with my piddley little rechargeable drill, and drilling myself a lovely hole in my finger… I packed up the flares, put the drill away (after cleaning off the blood) and rang Tapper over at Mannell’s hoping they’d feel sorry for me. After explaining that I also had little crosses burnt into my fingertips from forgetting how hot the screw heads would get, pity reigned supreme and I was told to ‘come on over’.

Now, this is where it gets really embarrassing. The boys at Mannell’s have fitted lots of Flexy Flares, so therefore knew the right way to fit them. It took them… oooooooh, maybe an hour to do all four, and that included smoko. I was quizzed as to how exactly I was trying to do them, which resulted in a chorus of “Why didn’t you read the bloody instructions?”… okay, point taken… read the instructions. Never listen to my own advice, do I?

Once the flares were on it was left up to me to get mud flaps sorted before final the engineering inspection. This turned out easier than I expected, due to the fact that when Ben at Ajay’s Smash cut the guards, he had plastic-welded the original lips for the mud flaps back onto the cut bumper bar. All I needed to do for the rear ones, was lob a bigger piece of rubber on.

And this is where it got even simpler! I trotted into Supercheap Auto and for the princely sum of ten big ones, grabbed a set of 4 rubber floor mats, cut them into mud flap shapes and using existing screws, attached them under the rear bumper. Easy peasy!

For the front ones (yes, front ones… have to pass engineers final check tomorrow!) I simply cut more little mud-flappy shapes and, low and behold, there were also existing screws in the front guards to use… yay!

Last thing to do for the day was to sort some floor mats as the original ones were destroyed on my last outing... carpet and mud are not a good mix! I grabbed some of those excellent Mud Tamer mats from Bushranger... and after testing, they worked really well!

So… Oscar’s all legal now… let’s go and see if the engineer agrees, eh?

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