In the few miles that I’ve put on the Supra, I’ve already managed to get a few rock chips. Many of these are in the wheel wells and this is largely because of the design of the Supra itself. If we look at the body panels near the wheel wells, we can see that they dip in and expose a portion of the tires, both in the front and the rear. This allows for rocks to get picked up and fling directly at the side panels. Luckily the damage that my Supra has received is pretty minimal but it’s time to address this issue.
After some research, I came across the Rock Guards from ZL1 Addons. This product is designed to fill in the gap and cover the exposed section of tires. The great thing is that the Rock Guards utilize OEM mounting locations so there is no need for any modifications. All the required hardware is included so the install should be pretty straight forward.
Starting at the front, we’re going to turn the wheel as far as we can in the direction of the wheel well that we’re working on. Here, there are 4 push rivets towards the outer edge of the wheel well. We will be utilizing these mounting locations to install the Rock Guards. We first have to remove the OEM rivets. This is a pretty straight forward process. All we have to do is find something that fits over the center pin and push it through the rivet. Here, I’m using a center punch. I’ve found that some rivets can be easily pushed through by hand while others are more tightly held in place. For the difficult rivets, just take a hammer or mallet and drive the punch or your tool of choice through the center pin and hole. At this point, the rivet body is loosely held in place and can be extracted. This can be done with the center punch by sticking it in the hole and wiggling the rivet out. If you have a specific rivet removal tool, that’ll be great for this step. I happen to have a trim removal tool that worked pretty well. Once the OEM rivets are removed, we can take the Rock Guards and do a dry fitting to make sure that everything fits properly. I’ve seen people install the Rock Guards two different ways. You can either put them on top of the fender liner or between it and the body panel. ZL1 Addons shows pictures of the Rock Guards between the OEM panels so that’s what I went with. I also think that this provides a cleaner look. Once everything is in place, it’s time to lock the Rock Guard down. Here’s a little tip, use your pin tool to align the holes prior to installing the new rivets. Leave the tool in one of the holes so that things don’t shift too much. Now, take the new rivets and push them into place. Don’t worry about the center pin just yet. Once you’re sure that everything is seated properly, you can go ahead and make the center pins flushed with the rivet head and lock everything in place. A mallet will be a good tool for this. Once all the rivets are properly installed, we are done with one side of the front.
Let’s move on to the back. Here, ZL1 Addons doesn’t mention that it is required to take the wheels off, but it will likely make the installation more straightforward. I felt that I could install the Rock Guards with the wheels on and I’m going to show you just how I did that. Like the front Rock Guards, we are going to have to remove some OEM hardware. Instead of rivets, in the rear we have to remove 3 bolts. There isn’t much clearance room but I was able to fit a stubby rachet in here with an 8mm socket and get the bolts out. From here, it’s just a matter of installing the Rock Guards with the new hardware. If you haven’t noticed, there is a bit of a gap between the fender liner and the edge of the wheel well. To compensate for this, ZL1 Addons provides us with some spacers. These go behind the Rock Guards and everything is held in place with the provided longer screw and washer. If you’re doing this without taking the wheel off like I am, I found that the easiest way to approach this is to hand tighten the topmost hardware first. After doing this, the Rock Guards can still easily swing back and forth. This will allow for enough clearance room to mount the hardware in the other two locations. Just get everything lined up and hand tightened. Here is going to be the hardest part of this process. We now have to fully tighten these screws down. I found that there wasn’t enough clearance room for even the stubby, a socket, and a Phillips bit. I then switched to a ratcheting wrench with the bit and although this works, the bit just moved around too much for my liking. I ultimately settled on a pair of locking pliers and the Phillips bit and this combo worked great. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a bit tedious to only have enough clearance room to be turning the screws about a quarter of a turn at a time but it’s really not that bad. The spacer takes up a lot of space and the screws realistically are not fastened very deeply. It actually did not take that long for me to tighten the screws down. I can almost guarantee that doing it my way would be faster than taking the time to jack the car up, put it on stands, take the wheels off, install the Rock Guards, then put everything back together. So, if you’re interested in this product and were worried that you’d have to take the wheels off. Have no fear, it is very possible to install the Rock Guards without doing so. At this point, all there’s left to do is to install the Rock Guards on all four corners and we are done.
I have to be honest, I was on the fence with the Rock Guards because I thought that they’d be very obtrusive and obvious. Now that I have them installed, they actually look very factory. If someone is not familiar with the Supra, they probably wouldn’t think anything of the Rock Guards. They just fit very well on the Supra. The color matches very well with the existing plastics and they are just wide enough to cover the entire tire and be functional but not wide enough to alarm anyone. They look good and will provide lots of protection. If you’re asking me, I have no absolutely no hesitation in recommending the ZL1 Addons Rock Guards for the Toyota Supra.
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