[lunarhighway]

late model bmw's and audi's have particulary big ones... i've been looking at these things for a while now and they keep appearing in or form or another on many cars.

the ones on the bmw and audi even warp around the wheelwell, basically they seem to be an extention of the inner wheel well liner so i think their aim is to keep air from ending up inside the wheelwell.

recents fords i've seen have an interrupted dam with a straight piece in front of the wheel and a second piece angled backwards with about a 1cm in between them, wich could be either a slot to allow brake cooling air to enter or a flex line to allow the dams to flex individually in case of an impact. on some cars the suspention also projects below the wheelwell when seen from the front so in this case the dams might also help to deflect air away from these components

i don't think they're for protection... what could happen? cars did fine for decades without these shields, and todays suspension and brakes are build better than ever.

i'm also beginning to believe not all dams do the same thing... some are just in front of the wheel others cover the entire with of the wheelwell.

i've seen at least one very recent model on the road, (although i can't remember wich but i expect to see it again) wich had a quite low airdam but behind it emediately in front of the wheels there seemed to be these dams, although they didn't project much below the frontal dam... one would assume they'd be redundant in that location but apparently not.

i've retrofitted my own versions of these dams on my car , and while they're perhaps not perfect im interested too see what their effect might be.