Tires rubbing outer rear fender

[cheap68]

Hey guys, On my 68 short fleet my tires are rubbing the outer lips on the rear fenders. Tires are m/t 315/60 drag radial pros. I was rubbing the inner tubs with 1/2 spacers, so I removed the spacers and tubbed it. I've run into problems now since I've lowered it from where I had it (5" drop springs with 2" lowering blocks and 6 degree shims). Wheels are 15x10 with 4.5 backspacing. I've tried to search for anybody posting on rolling the lips with little info on fleetsides at least, so I figured I'd post and get you're guys opinions on what to do. I'd really like to use these wheels and still keep this suspension drop and don't really want to deal with narrowering the rear end if possible right now. I still am in need of a c notch too. What it looks like to me is the wheel tub mounts to a piece that looks tacked to the fender lip, so I'm not sure how I'd really go about rolling the lip to get it to tuck easily. If I could figure out how to roll the lip it should tuck just fine, and I've already move the bed around and adjusted the pan hard bar to try and make sure it was as center as I could get it. Right now all I can think of is to remove the inside mounting piece altogether so I could either roll or cut the lip down? Would that be stable enough if the wheel tubs were only attached by the mounting bolts on the inside of the bed? Anybody got any experience with this or got any ideas? I'm all ears, thanks.

[PGSigns]

I dont think rolling the lips is going to get you what you need. From the pictures you need about 3" on each side to allow that tire to tuck under the fender. The truck will squat and roll some when it leaves and you need room for that along with room for the tire to move side to side on the rim some with out hitting. Two things that you can do are change the wheels or narrow the rear. If it were me I would narrow the rear and put the c-clip eliminators on it when I did it. If you are thinking of going to disc in the rear it opens the door for a 9" bearing end and the axles made for it. Much better than a c-clip eliminator.
Jimmy

[cheap68]

Yeah, I think I'm going to have to just narrow the rear end. Doesn't look like any way around it. Thanks.

[hotrod 80]

Looks like custom track/panhard bar time to me .

[Project86]

I had a 325 drag radial on 15x10 prostars with a 4.5" back space on the rear of my 86. And had the same issue. I used a cutoff wheel and cut my inner lip off. As well as a small portion of the actual inner fender (double wall bedside). And was able to clear without much modification.

[hewittca]

I know it's been a few months since you posted this, but just in case anyone else is wondering this as well, I have rolled the fender lip on mine with success. As you mentioned, there is that outer half of the wheel tub that is tac-welded to the fender lip. I cut that outer half wheel tub out which left me with the bolted on inner tub only. For the fender lip, I only rolled it so the inner lip was vertical because that made it flush with the fender as it curves up towards the top of the bed rail (in the cross section diagram, the dashed line is the outer fender well I removed and the arrow shows how much I rolled the fender lip in). If I rolled it in any more than that, I still wouldn't have gained any additional clearance because of the curvature of the fender. As for structural integrity, the inner bed wall/wheel tub is still plenty strong, but the bottom corners of the wheel opening are fairly flimsy without the outer wheel tub piece. These trucks did come with braces going to those points though, so as long as you put those back in the outer fender is still sturdy enough.

[kell490]

Just have a shop narrow it not that expensive if you take the Diff to them probably less then $300 maybe $150 more to re-spline if you want that or buy after market axles if you want to upgrade. I think if you pull all the parts out of it just take the empty axle housing around $150 usually I could be wrong going on what my friends Nova cost been about 15 years.