Pimp your ride with love handles for your car! You see a lot of high performance cars with wider, bulging bodies and here’s why. Wide body kits are a great addition to any car, and no they’re not love handles. They serve the purpose of helping contain the wider wheels and track your car may have due to fitting wider wheels for better traction and road grip. Wider wheels are a great idea for any driver and when you fit a wide body kit you can prevent stones and chippings damaging your vehicle and also stop pedestrians making contact with the wheel, if you should have any unfortunate accident.
Where cars do have wider wheels it makes sense for the car body to be wider from an aerodynamic perspective. It is also a typical road safety standard for the complete tyre to be contained which can be accomplished with mud guards or wide body kits, with the aim of any wide body kit being to fill encase the wider tyre, with no gaps between the wheels and the outside arch.
Car owners can use two techniques to achieve the wide body appearance. The first of these is to use spacers which are metal discs which can be bolted to the wheel hub and push the wheel out further from the car body. Alternatively, carowners can fit wider wheels. It’s also possible to alter hubs or fit a wider back axle.
Fitting Wide Body Kits
You should ensure the body kit you fit is no wider than the mirror width on the car, so you avoid constantly bumping the sides of the vehicle. A wide body kit is supplied in parts which will need attaching to the car, they can be riveted or attached with fixing studs. Each wide body kit is different, some have skirts that need fitting first while other kits need arches fitting first, if you lay out all the parts prior to fixing you can plan the job properly. Once fitted, a smoothing compound can be used to give a great finish. As an alternative, you can buy front arches which makes the job the same as fitting a new wing.
