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How do you modify a car to fit wider wheels


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Hi All,

I'm currently working on a Fujimi Mazda Savanna GT. I'm looking at converting it to a drag car (in the vain of a Mazda RX3)

There is no way the drag wheels from Hippie Hemi kit I have will fit under the current wheel arches. I presume there will be a fairly drastic modification needed to get the wheels to fit so i thought i'd ask for tips before i start. Cheers

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This is called "tubbing" or "back-halving". Do a search. There are a lot of how to's out there. This can be done by "kit-bashing", adding the back half of another kit, or scratch building the components you need.

Google "Chris Alston" this is a company that supplies the 1:1 builders with these components. There is a nice tutorial on that site that walks you through back halving an early Mustang. The process is the same for any vehicle.

Mark

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The car you're working on is a unibody, and essentially, you'll be building a traditional rectangular tube frame (or round-tube, if you want to get a little more radical) under the rear of the car to take the place of the unibody structure...which is not otherwise easily modified to accommodate wide tires. This is referred to as "back-halfing", as noted above.

The original structure is removed, a subframe is constructed and fitted in to the space, anchored to the remaining original structural elements, and floors and inner wheel-wells are fabricated to close everything up.

Mustangs are also unibody cars, and this is a simple back-half frame that replaces the original structure.

PB038742.jpg

It allows massive tires to be installed without flaring the outer fenders...

Mustang_back_half.jpg

Edited by Ace-Garageguy
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