Wheel well trim 1992 Excella

[Re-Pete]

I'm replacing the metal trim on my curbside wheel well. It's a two part affair. This is a 29' 1992 dual axel Excella. The first piece of trim pinches the aluminum and the poly wheel well cover together around the wheel well arc. It is fastened on with pop rivets. The second piece mounts to the outside of the first piece with concealed screws and hides the exposed pop rivets. The first piece needed only to be trimmed to fit. The second piece is more complicated. It already has most of the needed curves (radius curves) to fit around the wheel well opening, but it requires additional radius curves to turn into the end on the wheel well ending up behind and Infront of the wheels.

My question is does anyone have experience with this and can you advise me on how you put bends into this trim. I can see it requires some crimping, but because of it's complex shape I'm not certain how to accomplish bending curves into it. I have a five blade hand crimp tool and that's it. What else do I need?

[Bubba L]

Not sure about the wheel well trim on a 92. But I just finished bending the radius trim on the 63 Bambi wheel wells. I took a piece of thicker aluminum and made a pattern of the wheel well. Then I placed the pattern in a vice (upside down) so I could shape the trim into the pattern. We purchased the trim from VTS. The trick was to take a magic marker and mark the area where the 90 degree sweep was going to be. I took a hand torch of mapp gas and heated the area marked. When the magic marker mark disappeared, it was heated just enough to make the bend. The mark kept me from heating it too much and loosing the temper. Don’t know why, but it worked. Good luck

[Bubba L]

I still had to cut curfs on the back of the trim to get the exposed part to bend smoothly.