Hello Everyone and welcome back to FJD Performance!

We have been (somewhat) quietly working on a handful of projects over the last 8 or so months ranging from The Mare, to Elise and even Lil Chief, but today we are touching on a topic relating to some Thicc-ening of one of our cars. Thats right, we got some Hard Motorsport M3 flares for the wagon!

Back in August ’22 we purchased a set of front and rear fender flares to help compensate for the 18×10 Apex wheels we picked up a month prior. It didn’t take long for the flares to get to us from WA, but when they did we were in for a bit of a surprise.

The flares needed A LOT of work…

If the wagon were a racecar, then sure, we could have tossed on the flares “as is”, but we’re a bit anal over here and want things to look their best, so we set off over the next few months working and reworking the flares so they would fit and look perfect.

We started with the front fenders where the flares met the body moldings and once we solidified that, we moved to marking where we were going to cut the bumper piece off the fenders and sanding to find low spots that needed filling.

After we finished up with the filling and sanding we took a break for a couple months (NASA Nationals, Holidays, ETC) and then started back with the rear flares once our schedule opened up. The rears didn’t need as much work as the fronts, but the door trim pieces were significantly off and we debated using them or not. We made modifications to the door pieces, but they still were a little wonky… However we made them work when the time came.

From here we took another little break until we were more or less forced to finish the project. On Valentines day Elise was T-Boned in a work parking lot and luckily enough – outside of needing to replace the rear door – the damage to the rear quarter panel was perfectly covered by the rear flare!

After the initial mock-up, drilling and rivnutting (hah, nutting) the mounting spots in the body it was time to finish up the rear fenders and make all the last minute adjustments in preparation for paint and clear.

After getting the rears situated – and the replacement door installed – it was time to make the first quick trip over to SpecFab Racing to cut out the imperfections and drop a little weight in the process. Following the cutting we tossed on two of the EC7s to check the fitment in the rear.

Now came the time to finish off the door pieces. Lots of cutting and measuring was required for these little guys too. Since we had just replaced the door on the passenger side, and will be doing a different widebody in the future that doesn’t involve the door, we went with some 3M double sided body panel tape.

With the rears finished off and out of the way it was time to finish off the fronts

After some more finalizing and cutting it was time for paint, final fitting and visit no. 2 to SpecFab for cutting the front fenders. The fronts were a lot quicker and an overall more chill time than cutting the rears…

Following the cutting it was time for a quick wash for a quick pic followed by the ordering of some 12mm spacers to fit all around the car. The 12s with the offset on the style 67s is basically identical to the fitment the Apex’s will have, so we are quite happy with the fitment.

We’ve still yet to take a proper photo shoot, but that will happen in the near future once we pick up the latest completed project for the wagon. It’s gonna be very ass shot heavy if you know what we mean 😉

You can find additional photos from this project here, and expect some more regularly scheduled content to be arriving at FJD Performance over the next couple of weeks and months.