I may be picking a truck up with a set of fender flares, which I generally wouldn't mind. However, it has the flares that have the recessed screw holes every 3-4 inches around the whole flare. Personally, I think they're hideous BUT I do love the look of the smooth flares.

Anyways, how do these flares mount? Are holes drilled through the body? Could I get smooth flares to replace these "hole" style ones without much issue?

Thanks,
Shawn

p.s. Here is a photo of the truck/flares.

 

Those look like the bushwacker pocket flares. If they are, they use the inner fender mounts and some clips. Takes about 3 minutes to take off and thats if you take a couple swallows off your beer!

 

thats correct, however they do leave BAD rubs in... I mean through the paint. If you replace with smooth ones that aren't as thick, you will have to have the truck repainted. In my opinion Bushwacker made a crappy product and should repaint every truck that they damaged. As soon as I can find someone to paint my fenders, I'm giving my fender flares away.

 

So who is the better fender flare? I was afraid of paint damage, that's kind of a turn off now...

Shawn

 

Not sure... I think all of them do it! Some people add the clear rockerpanel tape on there, but I've heard it will rub through that too. I've got my rockers line X'd, so I don't need flares to keep from getting rockchips anymore...

 

It depends on how long the flares have been on there, and what kind of terrain the owner drove on, as to how bad they are rubbed through...

I have those same flares, and I took mine off for the winter when I put smaller tires and rims on...





They rubbed through the clear a little bit.

I had them on for approx. 9 months.

 

I was going to put some Xenon flares on my truck thinking the 2 sided tape between the flare and the side of the truck would mean no paint damage which is not the case I've learned:
https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...d.php?t=226404

If you're only keeping the truck 2 or 3 years you probably don't need to worry too much (it'll be the next guy's problem), but I'm going to have mine a lot longer than that.
You can see above what 9 months does, after a few years it'll rub through the base color and you'll start seeing rust, no one wants that.