But I love these mud flaps!!

[MetroMPG]

I finally gave up on vanity and removed my front mud flaps. The rear ones stayed on because I used them to mount the wheel skirts.

I may put the front ones on the EV, because it sees much lower speeds, and more crappy weather winter driving.

[whokilledthejams]

Originally Posted by Lazarus

How would you like to get off the plane wonder to the parking lot to find this.

If you got off the plane to find that, you should slit your wrists, because few cars are worse than the Trabant. Not only is it a symbol of horrific Cold-War era oppression, but the body is an unrecyclable plastic, pushed around by a two stroke engine with no emission control.

[Xringer]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

I finally gave up on vanity and removed my front mud flaps. The rear ones stayed on because I used them to mount the wheel skirts.

I may put the front ones on the EV, because it sees much lower speeds, and more crappy weather winter driving.

Maybe I'll clean these up and save them.. In case I decide to sell it someday.

I can see how the rear one might be used to hold a cross support for a skirt,
but the flaps are so soft, I think it might wobble in the breeze.


Yeah I think the least amount of work will be to take them off.
Maybe I'll wait until I get some Moon disc or KleenWheels to install.
Kill two drags with one stone..

Thanks,
Rich

[Xringer]

Originally Posted by lunarhighway

maybe you could swap the front ones lef-rigth so they mount backwards...that seems smoother...

Thanks for the L-R swap idea, if I mounted them on the front of the wheel well, I would have wheel dams!

I was looking over the rear flaps today and the front area of the wheel well just might be an good fit for the swapped flaps.

The front flaps don't look as good for this trick. But, if they don't fit well enough, I might be able to use the rears up front.


If they did actually fit (swapped around), I'm wondering if they would need
to be cut shorter a little.?. The wheel dams I've seen on modern cars seem to
be only an inch or two in height.


This one looks like it might be 2"-2.5" tall..

Cheers,
Rich

[lunarhighway]

i've been playing around with wheel dams and looking into them, from what i've learend from oem setups and what the picture above also illustrates is that they seem to be largely placed to deflect air aways from the suspention and wheelwell gap (wich is bigger at the front because of steering) rather then the tire itself... maybe the tire could use some sheiedling as wellnbut be carefull not to defelect air to the wheelwell where apparently it's not wanted either.

i've had the same thought about useing mudflaps as airdams, but in the end they wouldn't fit that way, and would have been way to big...

i think these things dams need to be exacly sized to work, so imho putting them in front of the wheels as they are might not work.

what i meant is place them in the original location but backwards.

i don't remember where, but i've seen figures that sugest mudflaps could cause up to 7% of the total drag. might be worth takeing them off.

also just a thought but perhaps you could stick some (clear) vinyl? film on the car in locations where you'd suspect stone dameage, that might protect the surface...or black film might make the car look more ruged then mudflaps and you could use splatter patters as a guide to where they'd need to be.

[i_am_socket]

Stock rear wheel dams on my corolla don't seem to be doing much...

[Xringer]

Wow.. What good is that going to do hanging out there like that?

Edit: Are you sure that isn't just a bracket for mounting a mudflap??


I also have heard of the 7% figure. I wonder if that's the average or worse case scenario?

If I can get some front air dams out of the deal or not, those mudflats are going into storage.. (Soon as the weather cools off a little).

Back in 2000 when I put these on, I remember wondering how much drag I was adding to the car.

[lunarhighway]

well i just looked back at my gasslog for my previous car... when i got it it had mudflaps that where just huge, after i took them off i saw about a 2-3 mpg improvement. but again they projected quite a bit beyond the sides of the wheels.

as for that corolla dam, it does look suspicious,but i don't think they'd have bothered to put it there if it did notting, it's not like anyone care or even knows these things are there or not so if they didn't work they leave them off and save on production costs... an uncle recently bought a new vw passat, and the dams on the font wheels also had an opening above them, with a duct to them from the front of the fairings... this was a very solid and deliberate setup.... perhaps break cooling...

[ttoyoda]

If you got off the plane to find that, you should slit your wrists, because few cars are worse than the Trabant. Not only is it a symbol of horrific Cold-War era oppression, but the body is an unrecyclable plastic, pushed around by a two stroke engine with no emission control.

At first I thought that a bit harsh, but then I realized that the people who had no other choice in what car to drive were not flying on airplanes either. There was a waiting list of years for Trabants in the soviet bloc. Eastern europeans who managed to get over the border (into free europe) in them parked them and walked away.

[whokilledthejams]

Originally Posted by ttoyoda

At first I thought that a bit harsh, but then I realized that the people who had no other choice in what car to drive were not flying on airplanes either. There was a waiting list of years for Trabants in the soviet bloc. Eastern europeans who managed to get over the border (into free europe) in them parked them and walked away.

Exactly. They were successful, because that's all there was. There's lots of good reasons they were abandoned, and seem to all have been turned into art cars since.

Soviet-era cars were mostly all Trabant-like (e.g., Lada, ZAZ, etc.), save for those reserved for the Party (GAZ, Tatra, etc.).

More information:
http://www.autosoviet.altervista.org/main-english.htm