The problem: The tires were rubbing the fender way to much once my springs broke themselves in a bit.
Original Solution: Actually put bump stops back on the SJ.
Solution we went with: Getting rid of a decent chunk of the fender.
We wanted to keep a somewhat stock look with the full fender, so we went a slightly different route then most flat fender conversions.
First, take on Suzuki SJ
Draw a line about where you want the new fender line to be.
Ignore that line and just cut somewhat close to it.
Make sure that you don't hit any electrical on the inside of your fender.
Once you make your initial top cut, take out the sheet metal between the top and the bottom of the fender line.
Here we decided to keep the original headlights. Another method would be to head straight to the left and put in square headlights. Late 90's Chevy full sized rigs would be just about perfect. So draw a line on where you want to make the next cut.
Sawzall!
Weld up the back side of the fender that you cut out.
Push the front of the fender together and weld it in place.
You should have a gap under your fender, use a piece of scrap metal to fill this up. We used left overs from the fender on one side. It worked, but was a pain to weld. On the other side we just used some 3/16th we had laying around the garage.
Next we built a guard for the headlight to replace the part we took out of the fender and welded it in.
Clean up your welds.
Throw some paint on it.
Put the lights back in and your done.
There are larger pictures online at
http://picasaweb.google.com/Drone637/SJ410FendersI'll throw some pictures up after the test run on Saturday and see how it works.