Notch Customs M-Max fender flair review

[holeski]

Deciding what products and parts to use on the Holeproof Comanche Shop Truck has been hard. There are a lot of great manufactures so we try to give them the chance to prove there product is better then the rest and send some items to test out in one of the harshest climates in the world, Alaska! This wasn't the case with the Notch Customs fender flairs. We bought a set of the M-Max flairs for MJs & 2-door XJs and had them shipped. First shipping was a pain as they told us $300+ on top of the $550 price tag. We understand they are in Utal and not use to shipping very far. After some time we were able to get them to arrange USPS for under $200. Notch Customs have some pretty convincing torture testing videos posted, so we hoped these would prove well in Alaska. But we should have know something was a foot when they said they didn't want to send a set to test up here. Still we pulled the trigger since something had to be done for the Holeproof Arctic MJ Project. Excited to see how they would look, month after month nothing in our deliveries. A email out to Connor at Notch and we find out they haven't even been made. A few weeks later we get a message that they are done then another month long wait before they show up. Although the box was packed very well with no evidence of outside damage which makes what we find worse. Broken mounting hardware! The rest of the bolts all goofy and crooked. Come to find out all they do is "glue" bolts to the fiberglass. Not molded in, not reinforced. We spoke to an fiberglass specialist who pretty much laughed when he saw the photos and said there is no way they would hold up, let alone here in Alaska when it gets cold. We also noticed no instructions are included, worse then that no templet for drilling holes! There are some poor non-vehicle specific instructions on the Notch website. (http://notchcustoms.com) Basically hold the flair up using tape or someone and guess where the holes should go. There is no reference to where or how to locate them on the body. Bolt on trace and cut. Fill all the gaps with body filler and/or sand the fiberglass. If mounting bolts don't fit enlarge holes until they do. Don't forget the rear need cut, folded and welded. Ok, Wow. Another email back to Connor at Notch with photos of our dilemma, maybe, just maybe we got a defective set, and and we want to give them the benefit of doubt. The reply;

"Our flares are designed so that the bolts will break loose before major damage is done to the flare."

So what good is a fender flare that stays in one piece if you can't attach or mount it to the rig?

And they said glue it back on using body filler! Glue, really did they just say glue? He goes on to say "it does not need to be perfectly perpendicular to the base of the flare. The holes that will be drilled are meant to be a little larger than the bolts." This goes back to the instructions that say keep making the hole bigger until it fits. Sounds like they might not be any consistency to how the flares are built. At the angles of some of the bolts we would need to make a lost 1 inch oblong holes to mount the flares. Even though this is Fiberglass they should still be precise and be able to provide a templet for the average customer. After all we want you to be able to use what we sale.

 

How we feel. We loved the look of the flairs, although we would have liked them just a little wider. The fiberglass does seems strong and is a good thickness. They open the wheel well nicely but you do need to reinforce the fenders some. They don't fit well, it takes fiberglass, body filler, sanding of the flairs to get a precise fit. If you don't mind the extra work this is fine and will result in a better look. That is if you know what your doing otherwise look at paying $500-1500 to have a bodyshop do the work and these doesn't include painting. They are primed but not painted. Our biggest upset was the broken bolts and how the mounting hardware is attached using just some greenish-blue poop looking goop. We would have liked to have seen the bolts molded into the flare or better yet a metal skeleton the bolts are attached to with the fiberglass molded around those. What was even worse then the mounting was the customer service. Everything seemed like an excuse or copout. As much as we like the look of the Notch Customs fender flairs we think there is still some improvement needed before they should be sold to the public. These might be fine for your street queens and mall crawlers, but not Northern Alaska Off-Roading. Unless they can fix there mess up here and send a replacement that proves what we received was defective, we can not not recommend these to any of our customers. We can't even complete the the install. We tried a few more times to get them to replace them, but they were not intristed. They did offer to refund us our money if we paid the $300 shipping to send them back first but we felt that it was there responsibility to send a call tag for them. They even went as far as to have Facebook remove this very review for our pages.

 

We also started find many posts online like this one on CherokeeTalk.

"wjlizard

Join Date: Aug 2012

Posts: 1,803

 

If you are using your XJ to wheel even a little bit stay away from notch customs x-max flares the mounting system sucks ask me how I know ,they look great but the mounts break real easy"

[holeski]

Notch Customs MJ flairs unboxed.

 

 

Front Notch Vs. Bushwacker, Top

 

 

Front Notch Vs. Bushwacker, Side Rear

 

 

Notch Customs flairs arrived with broken mounting hardware. The bolts that were not broken were all pointing in different directions. Also the fiberglass had some twisting in the mold and are not flexible. (Drivers Front)

 

 

(Passanger Front)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Front Notch mock-up on the Comanche, would have looked nice if they could have been mounted.

 

 

[neohic]

How unfortunate. On a truck like yours, I think these flares would fit the bill perfect in the looks department. On the other hand, it would still be advertising for a company that you clearly want nothing to do with anymore. You mentioned this though...

 

... We would have liked to have seen the bolts molded into the flare or better yet a metal skeleton the bolts are attached to with the fiberglass molded around those....

 

I think this is the route I'd go to try and make the best of it. After all, that's a lot of cash to throw at a set of flares. For how stout they claim them to be on their website, why not take some flat bar and match the curve of the bottom of the flare? Mounted on the inside of the flare, it would give a solid place to weld on some new mounting studs along with adding a little more material on the under side for filling any gaps for the rear flares. The flat bar could then be attached to the flare with additional hardware and barely be visible. Just a thought anyhow... sorry for the soup sandwich of a situation you're in with Notch.