What is guard rolling?
Fender rolling (also known as guard rolling) is the process of reshaping the factory wheel-arch lip — the small ‘L’-shaped inner edge — into a tighter ‘V’ shape or flattening it completely against the panel.
By removing this sharp inner lip, you create more wheel and tyre clearance, which helps prevent rubbing and allows you to safely run wider rims, lower offsets, and larger tyres without damaging your guards or tyres.
Importance of Rolling Your Guards
When fitting larger, wider rims or going up tyre sizes and/or are lowering the car – you are decreasing the clearance between the wheels and lips of the guards. With decreased clearance, the tyres/wheels can rub against the fenders, liners and more. Not rolling the guards can cause serious rubbing issues and can also catch the 90° lip on the tyre which leads to warped panels, kinks, dimples, creasing, paint cracking and tyre shredding.
20 Years of Experience.
Des has decades of experience rolling guards across many makes and models. From steel bumpers to plastic, we offer fender rolling for your old Fairlane, Commodores, WRX or even Ferrari 360s.
There is more to guard rolling then just bolting on a roller and ramming it back and forth. Across the various makes and models, there are lots of nuances and scenarios that change what methods need to be used.
Understand The Risks
Rolling guards involves moving/bending metal or plastic out of the position it was made to, and also the paint that was sprayed on top of it. Even though the lip is a small portion of the panel, moving the lips can affect a larger area above it. There are also so many differences across the many makes and models. How thick the panel is, the size of the lip, whether the lip is pressed from factory or no lip at all, size of the panel, mounting tabs, liner, skin, dodgy repairs, seam sealer and more.
What Causes Damage?
One of the biggest reasons for damage is repaired / resprayed fenders. Cars with factory paint generally don’t have issues, depending on the make and model. Repaired panels can have bog, weaker metal, poorly adhered paint, panel isn’t flat, dents and more. If you have factory paint but have dents and/or paint cracks near the edge of the guard, then you should prepare for those areas to get worse. Rust can also cause serious issues, which is usually an older imported car issue. Some models have factory weak spots and can’t be rolled without issues.
Work in progress table to learn aspects of guard rolling catered for your make and model. Please remember this is not finished and we are adding as much useful information on popular models as we can over time.
