Little back-story:
If any of you are following my thread in the Wheels section about getting 19" Michelin PSS sizes to fit on a lowered car, you probably know that I rolled my fenders and these tires still don't fit.
Last summer I had Yokohama tires on my wheels with these specs: 215/35 on 19x8.5 ET35 and 235/30 on 19.9.5 ET45. These BARELY rubbed with the suspension settings the same as they are now. Maybe once in a blue moon, going 75 MPH on the highway I'd hit a big dip and I would get some rub.
Now I have 225/35 and 245/35 Michelin PSS and the rub in front was pretty unbearable. Even worse, my bumper has been a little messed up to begin with, and the tires would rub on the corner of the bumper where it meets the fender, and it would tear up the side of the tire.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, since the roll didn't work, I decided to try and pull the fender a little bit in the front. Some people use rubber mallets to do this, but I decided that the phone book method is the best way to go because it will keep it very even since the book is of uniform thickness.
Here is the DIY:
Materials needed:
-Your car
-A heat gun (hair dryer may work as well, but it'll take longer to heat up the metal)
-A jack (with a BMW jack pad adapter if you're doing this on your 1er)
-A relatively thick phonebook
-Yourself and maybe some friends
-Optional: A sunny day (direct sunlight hitting the paint keeps it hotter while you're doing other stuff and not directly using the heat gun)
What you do:
1) Make sure you're ready and have all your materials. If you're running back and forth looking for stuff, you are more likely to make stupid mistakes.
2) Raise your car with the jack. Simple enough. You don't have to go crazy, just barely high enough to create enough fender gap to insert the phonebook.
IMPORTANT NOTE: At this point, make sure that you use an old cloth to clean the underside/inside of the fender where you'll be pulling. If you have little rocks or debris in there, you may push them through the metal a bit and create dimples or spots on the outside of the paint.
3) Start heating the paint. You want it to be relatively hot. When I had my fenders originally rolled, it was an 88 degree day with direct sunlight so my black paint was hot enough without a heat gun. You want to heat it enough so that you can't keep your hand on the paint for more than a second or two. Cooler paint is actually fine, it doesn't need to literally burn you, but you want to heat it up a lot now so that while you're doing other stuff, it stays warm enough with minimal reheating so you can keep working and doing stuff without worrying constantly about the paint cracking.
4) Insert a phone book into the gap. Either put the binding inside or outside. Don't insert the book with the binding going cross-ways or you'll make a crease in your fender at the spot where the binding of the book is.
5) Keep the paint warm. You'll see this is a common theme in this relatively short DIY.
6) Lower the car. You should see your fender smush the phonebook.
7) Make sure paint is still warm.
8) Open your door on the side of the car with the fender you're pulling. Stand on your door-sill and hop up and down. You'll see the fender flexing on top of the phone book. If this isn't working well enough just by yourself if your phone book isn't quite thick enough or you have a bit more fender gap, you can also have some friends add weight in the car.
9) Make sure paint is still warm.
10) Raise the car again. Reposition the phone book. Keep the paint warm. Repeat with the phone book in the new position.
When I did this, I had the phone book in three positions. One was in the front where the bumper meets the fender. This is where I was rubbing the most. The next position was closer to the top of the fender, with the phone book's edge just where the edge of the fender line is (not under the bumper metal at all). And the last position was closer to the rear of the wheel well. I was not rubbing back there, but I wanted to make it look even all the way around.
Voila. You're done. Repeat with the other wheels.
Some notes: There is some hard plastic under the area where the fender meets the bumper. On one side of my car, this just kinda bent inward with the pressure from the pulling, on the other this actually snapped. This might have something to do with the fact that my bumper has been abused for a long time now. First some ice from a truck, then a rock fell off a dump truck, some regular bumps and scrapes along the bottom, and then I scraped the edge along some wooden siding because I just didn't give a shit any more.
***
Here are some pictures of the process:
Fender gap prior to pulling. Note that you can't really see the top of the tire at all, the gap is too small. You can also see the balled up rubber on that edge that the tire was rubbing on.
Tools you'll need.
Raise the car.
Insert the phone book. Note that this is the first of the three positions I did, as mentioned above.
Lower the car onto the phone book. Then jump around to pull on the fender.
Remove phone book and re-lower the car. You can see the top surface of the tire a little better than in the first pic. Mission accomplished.
End result.
Thank you for looking!