GTR Stagea - Starting the Widebody

The tyres were rubbing like crazy but I did get some photos of it to show the fitment and why stock fenders aren't going to work.






This shot really shows the difference in width. It was a little hard to visualize up till now.

Also thought it was a good idea to show how much higher the GTR arch sits than the Stagea ones









Initially I thought that it was that the radius for the wheel arch was actually larger on the GTR, but it turns out they're both the same size it's just that the GTR fender is obviously designed to be a lot closer to the ground than it is and so the whole thing just needs to be dropped down about 20mm before it matches the rear.

But moving on from that, the rear fenders were marked for cutting.





For the fender cut I actually opted to go pretty conservative with my initial cut. I know that I'll need to take more than this out to get full suspension travel clearance, but I wanted to design the widebody first so I know what material to leave.

Even so it's still pretty much the same process except I didn't bother welding it the whole way up, just a few tacks to give it back it's rigidity.
















Time to finally start the widebody. First step is sealing off all the gaps because this expanding foam goes absolutely everywhere.



This time I even put something on my wheel tubs because I've still got foam on the ones on my cybermx5.





So we're going with expanding foam again. I've thought a lot about the best way to tackle these widebodies since making the one on my mx5 as well as things I would change.

So I still don't have a 3d printer or any computer design skills so that option was out. CNC cutting profiles was going to cost more than the car so that's out. Clay would be awesome and I really wanted to try that, but you can't buy it in NZ and by the time I'd shipped enough of it from China the price was going to be astronomical, and then I'd have to store a whole pallet of clay in a barn that is hardly even waterproof.

So it really did turn out that the best method was still to box it all up and go with the expanding foam. So I got to pouring.







Shaping this foam could not be easier. Larger chunks are cut off with a saw, then I found that a carving knife goes through this stuff like nobodies business and give a little more control with taking the fine slices off.





Shaping the front was easy as. Since I spent all that time shaping the fender underneath to the exact perfect line, all I had to do was sand down to meet up with that line and then carry that straight down the sideskirt and on to the bumper.







The rear was more of a challenge.

Because I was designing this on the fly, there was a lot of sketching and measuring and eyeballing.

I took a lot of the design elements from the GTR and transferred them to the rear like the angles of the front and rear of the fender, as well as the gentle arch on the top.

It ended up looking quite a lot like the Pandem style kits but that was actually completely accidental. It's actually not the only time I worked my own way towards a design that already exists but working with car that has been modified as much as the GTR has, it's pretty hard to find something that hasn't been done before.

I will just say though, before Rocket Bunny or Liberty Walk announce it like next week or something, here me out: Narrowbody kits. Basically make an inverted fender where you cut the original to expose the tyre and then put this liner on the inside to make the look cleaner. It exposes the tyre and makes the car look like an F1 with the exposed tyres.

I'm patenting this design so nobody steal it until I get a chance to.

Carrying on with refining the lines.







For the front I decided that I wanted to cut the flare off as high as I could. There was no way to avoid bringing a piece on to the front bumper itself. The actual radius of the over fender was shifted quite a lot from the original and so they didn't line up at all. The bottom of the front bumper piece was determined by what the highest point was that I could mate the flare to the bumper while keeping a smooth curve between the two.



The reason I wanted to make this front piece as small as possible was because I want people to be able to fit whatever front bumpers they like when they do this kit. If I made the front section of the flare come all the way down to the bottom then that limits peoples choices for front bumpers.



Because most bodykit manufacturers design parts to work with each other, you'll find a lot of the bumpers are all very similar the closer you get to other panels like the fenders. This means that that section of almost all the aftermarket bumpers should be pretty much the same, otherwise that bumper wouldn't be compatible with standard GTR fenders. So using that to my advantage the design that I've gone for should mean that you can run any front bumper you want.

And of course the front bumper piece covers up the OEM GTR turn signal so that anybody buying this kit has the option to re-use the ones from the Stagea and save having to spend hundreds of dollars on even more GTR parts.





While refining the rear the main things that I had to focus on where the defined ridge running straight through the middle of the fender, as well as the size of the front and rear sections and the arch at the top.

For the angle of the ridgeline I wanted a slight downwards slope to match the front (gives feeling of speed and all that nonsense) luckily the Stagea bodyline already had this downwards slope so rather than put 2 competing lines on the car I just used the laser level to copy the Stagea's body line straight down and use that. So that part was sorted.

The upper arch was more tricky. Because it was determined by the end points of the ridgeline, that meant the top of the arch, the ridge, and the inner radius for the wheel well were all linked together. I actually tested quite a few combinations of heights here and had to repour the foam a couple times.

I ended finding what in my opinion is the perfect balance of; just enough curve, enough distance from the ridge line to the inner arch, enough distance from the ridge line to the upper arch, enough distance from the upper arch to the bottom of the rear glass. It was tricky, and it took a lot of back and forth but I reckon I nailed it.



Then with those 2 sorted, figuring out how much to extend the flare in front and behind the wheel was just a matter of shaving it down until it went from looking good to looking bad, then adding it back on and not touching it anymore.


And then I cut out the filler door.







I thought about playing around with the hinges so that I could keep the smooth lines of the flare, but every way of modifying the hinge just seemed real janky to me. And it simplifies making this kit if I can just not include that extra piece anyway so I just elected to leave it as it was. I used to not like how these cutout filler caps looked but seeing it in person and thinking about how much work was going to go into it change my mind.