How to Install Rugged Style Fender Flares 1997-2003 Ford F-150

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

We're going to replace our fender fares on this truck because the clips are broken. These are hanging off. Plus we're going to put some wider ones on that cover over these oversized tires. To remove these, they are clipped into the body. I'm going to use our plastic prying tool. You can get these from 1AAuto.com.

This one is already kind of broken over here, so I'm just going to peel it away and just kind of carefully find the clip and pop it off. Normally there's supposed to be screws up in these holes here. You'd have to remove all those screws. There's a clip down here that's supposed to be there, and it's missing on ours. Again, this is why we're removing them. I'm just going to flip open, get our plastic prying tool in here. See where clips connect to, they're broken. Use soap and water to clean this. For our purposes, I'm just going to use a rag with a little bit of glass cleaner. Just wipe this off before we put the new flare on.

This is our old flare that we took off. This is the new flare from 1AAuto.com. This comes as a set of four; two fronts, two rears. You can see how much bigger this one is, it will actually fit over the old one, but the radius is basically the same. They will fit in a similar manner. The mounting's a little bit different. It comes with all the brackets and hardware that you need to mount it. We'll show you how to do that. It comes with instructions. The new ones also come with a roll of weatherstripping that needs to be stuck to the outside edge right here. It is one single roll and it's cut to fit, so we start on one, lay it all the way out, cut it, do the next flare.

I'm going to show you how to do that now. I'm going to start it. It's actually got a channel. That channel is going to slide into here, and then we're going to work it around the entire edge of the fender flare. I'm going to start by peeling some of the backing off of the tape. Just a couple inches to get it started. We'll leave a little piece of tape backing here loose.

We're not going to pull the rest of it yet. I'm actually going to feed it in there. I'm going to take, I like the way this is positioned. I'm taking the squeeze part together that I've pulled the backing off of. With this seated, I'm going to start to gently pull this backing away. Make sure it's pressed in there, just squeezing it as I go along, just keep feeding it in. Pull some more tape backing. Now what I'm going to do is trim the excess, so I'll get it pretty close to the edge. Grab scissors. Finish pushing this onto the edge of the flare. Just going to go along the edge, make sure it's all stuck down. The weatherstrip is installed on the flare.

Our flare is going to fit like this. I need to remove this little 5.5 millimeter self-tapping screw here, because it's going to go through this part. To hold this in place while I'm working on it, I'm just going to take this down for a second. I'm just going to use some masking tape. That will keep it from falling. We are doing this on a lift, but you can definitely do this on the driveway on the ground. This is just easier for us to show you what we're doing. I'm going to take this screw out here with a 5.5 millimeter socket and a ratchet.

Now I'm going to take the screw, put it back through the slotted hole, and get it started. Don't have to fully tighten it, just enough to hold it. We're going to adjust our tape. I'm going to work on this side. Same thing, 5.5 millimeter screw. Take one of our brackets that came with the kit, got a little tab that goes into the flare and a slotted hole for the screw. Put our clip in, push the flare in a bit. Hold it in place, while I get my socket and ratchet, and tighten that down. Once it feel it goes tight, just going to stop.

At this point we can pull our masking tape off. There is a screw up here. Going to remove this screw. Install our bracket. Going to push the flare in a bit. Going to remove this screw. Go back down to our first screw that we installed and finish tightening it up.

That fender flare is installed. It's nice and tight, it's not loose like our old one was. Also looks more aggressive, and goes good with our big tires. Install the rubber weather strip in the same manner as the front flare, but some of the hardware is different for the rear install, so we're going to show you how to install that on the truck afterwards.

We've got our original rear flare and our new flare. It's going to be a lot bigger and more aggressive looking. This one's actually installed correctly. It has all the screws where they're supposed to be. There’s some clips under here. We're going to start by removing the plastic clip under here with a trim clip tool. The clip that looks like that, we don't need it anymore, we can discard it. There's another one of those clips back here. Pull that out. Take a Philips head screwdriver and start removing these screws. With the screws removed, time to remove the flare from the body.

Got some clips on it. If the clips are left behind, that's okay. Plastic prying tool to remove the clips. I'm just going to wipe this clean with a rag and some glass cleaner. We'll place our new flare into position. I'm going to use some masking tape to hold it there. This clip goes on the front. There's a large Philips head screw, it's self-tapping, goes with it. I'm just going to get it started. What's going to happen is this clip, we're going to push the fender flare up. This clip has a little lock tab that's going to go through, it's going to lock the fender flare up and against the body. Tighten the screw.

Going to take one of the new self-tapping Phillips head screws that was provided with the kit. Line it up with this hole here. Take these clips, they're going to clip around the steel of the body and then in and catch the flare. This has to slide into the flare, and then it has to clip to the body side over here. Repeat this for the other three clips, just like that. The final one over here, just like that. Can take our tape off. We'll wipe the hand prints off of here. The new fender flares are installed.

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