Hi All,
I had an issue with my 2002 e825 GEM 4 seater rear fender cracking.
I sought help here and received alot of very helpful information (thanks OLD HOUSEBOATER) on solutions. I am going to try and go through this from the beginning so hopefully helping others who may have had this frustration. So here we go. Please excuse typos and funny angled pictures.
I had my GEM custom built full frame up, she was a beauty. Within about 3 weeks my rear fender had about 4 major cracks, basically destroyed and up repairable. I contacted my builder and he was devastated, having done over 1,000 builds he had never seen anything like this. He replaced the fender and within about 2 weeks I started to see a crack developing. Again the builder and I were dumbfounded. The only thing I could think was that the 16" rims and tires were vibrating and hitting the fender causing stress. There was only about 1" of clearance on top and less than 1/2" on the sides. So I started searching here…
Enter OLD HOUSEBOATER…
He had similar issues and recommended that I follow what he did to alleviate this issue with his gem. This was to make a bracket to attach the fender brackets to the “frame” instead of the rear “axle” . He sent me pictiures of what he did and I sent him pictures of what my frame was like and we figured how to do it. The builder would have taken my GEM back to figure it out but he is in Arizona (I in California) and I like to tinker and the challenge so it was “game on”
I purchased a 4’ section of 2" aluminum angle, nuts, bolts, washers and 1" steel strap.
I cut about 11" of the angle aluminum, notched it so that the top flat goes to rear cross member of frame so I could bolt it from the top to keep it stable so it would not vibrate down since the only other connection was the rear axle/frame bolt. This provided basically an extension of the frame to mount the two fender brackets to.
Then I cut another piece about 6-7" long from the same piece. This I attached the fender bracket to then attached this to the frame bracket I already installed.
With my GEM when I attached the frame bracket it brought the fender brackets out about 3/4" on each side so that is why I went this route.
I bolted the fender brackets to the shorter aluminum piece. Then I bolted both of the fender brackets onto the fender. I then set this onto the new frame brackets and got everything lined up and centered and marked where to connect the 2 aluminum pieces together. Took the fender brackets w/aluminum off the fender and and mounted them to the frame bracket.
To give myself the 3+" clearance for the tires I wanted OLD HOUSEBOATER recommended a 2" lift kit.
He sells them and they are solid, come with all the mounting hardware and easy to install. $75.00 delivered priority mail.
You can see that I was able to put one plate inside the mounting bracket and one outside so everything fit like a glove.
Now came the tricky part. With my particular bracket being mounted this way it would not fit under the shock mount so you can see I cut it at the outside top mount and used the 1" steel strap to bend and make a new bracket for the inside top mount. Mounted this strap to the fender bracket. Put the fender on to figure where to drill the 1/2" hole for the rubber mount and put it all together. You can see this new silver strap in the picture above and this one
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Once that was all done I put the fender back on and and so far so good. I have had 4 adults in this with no issues. It seems that the fender now does not vibrate near as much being connected to the frame.
Here is the tire clearance before
And this is after mounting the fender to the frame and 2" lift
And in case you are wondering what the plate “R MOUSE” means this might help understand “Our Mouse”
I hope this is helpful to others that have this issue. I have other photos but as you can see I am not very computer literate so I posted them in several posts. If you would like more info or pics PM me,
Thanks again OLD HOUSEBOATER for all of the help and patience with all of the questions.
Took awhile but worth it. Looks GREAT!!!