Fitted my mudflaps, found loads of muck in wheel arch

K

kittylover

Well-known user
Jun 15, 2012
1,385
860
North Warwickshire
Well, finally I got to fit my kitty with mudflaps (or schmutzfangen in german - what a fantastic word!!). Genuine Ford with cougar logo on the rear flaps, bought off eBay. Everything easy peasy, my 13 year old lad helped me.

Why I'm posting is just to say that when I fitted the front flaps, you have to pull out the little clip that holds the wheel arch liner so that you can use a little screw in this hole. When I did this I pulled away the wheel arch liner a little bit, and well I have never seen so much crap in all my life. I scraped it out with my fingers and still more and more came out. There must have been over 1 kg in total !! My car is just that little bit lighter now.

Now that's OK, but I am guessing that the real problem is that this crud blocks up the sill drainage and so this is why the sills start to rot ? Am I right ?

I've had my kitty for 2 years and never looked at this before, so that may be 12 years worth of crap in there - I will keep a closer eye on them in future and make sure my drainage channels stay clear but it may be a bit late as a close inspection revealed some red bits on the sils :sick:- although I guess that's no surprise on a 12 year old car.

I checked the same thing on my 06 reg MK3 Mondeo and - well nothing in there at all - but the wheel arch liners are a very snug fit. Coincidence ?

Any comments appreciated, cheers,

Rod
 
yup think this is pretty common

tigger74 said:
May be worth checking behind the wheel arch as well as when i fitted the cruise control bracket look what fell out!!!!!
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Makes you think about why some cars have rust in areas.
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when i undersealed my cougar i removed all the plastic inside the wings and gave them a good coat of hameright
 
Kittylover, we're restoring a 14-year-old Rover 218 coupe at the moment.

There's plenty of places that rot can set in - like the tail vents - but none are worse than the rubbish that builds up behind the arch liners. Clean that lot out and you're a long way toward a solid restoration. (y)
 
Might be hard to beleive now but, the previous owner of my cat lived on a farm, and undersandably access was somewhat difficult in bad weather. this was the main reason for her selling. Anyway, for those that remember, pre roush days i also fitted mudflaps front and rear. I did the same as kittylover, removing the arch liners and the foam inserts and shovelled heaps of damp soil/farmyard crud/straw etc from both sides. The rear wasn't any better, the bumper had absolutely loads of the stuff sat up on the inside and the fuel filler pipe was un identifiable as it was caked in farmyard manure :oops:. Not a threat of rust to the bumper cover i know, but the fuel pipe was in need of a good seeing to :eek:.
All in, i filled a 2 gallon bucket. I hosed out the arches then gave them very liberal amounts of waxoyl.
 
Pid_16V said:
I hosed out the arches then gave them very liberal amounts of waxoyl.
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And even if our cars haven't had the allegedly dubious start that yours did, we can make them better than Ford ever intended by doing this and sealing all the bolt holes.

Mine will be done in September. Tracey's is being done now.
 
Mako said:
And even if our cars haven't had the allegedly dubious start that yours did, we can make them better than Ford ever intended by doing this and sealing all the bolt holes.

Mine will be done in September. Tracey's is being done now.
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Yup, this is what I am thinking is the next step. Thanks for the info.
 
Well that was just sealing the slam-vents and we only used a domestic metal sealant.

If you want to preserve your car from underneath, use this stuff. We're ready to use that on all three of ours. In fact, just buy everything that Bilthamber sells and use it. LOL
 
Fitted my mudflaps at last, front and back proved to be a pig, front near side would not keep the top clip in place, it sprung off twice falling inside the arch needing the removal of the flap to extract it, second time I left it in there and ordered six off eBay, the back ones would have been ok but the screws that need removing were rusted and had to get the wheels off to get access, still on now and look nice with the logos on.
 
dakota1112001 said:
Fitted my mudflaps at last, front and back proved to be a pig, front near side would not keep the top clip in place, it sprung off twice falling inside the arch needing the removal of the flap to extract it, second time I left it in there and ordered six off eBay, the back ones would have been ok but the screws that need removing were rusted and had to get the wheels off to get access, still on now and look nice with the logos on.
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Did you find loads of crap in your arch liners too ??
 
dakota1112001 said:
Yes i did, was a bit pushed for time when I fitted them so did not clear it all out but it's a job worth doing at some point
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I'm obviously not a car designer so I'm not going to second-guess the industry professionals, but it seems to me that this is a problem that must have a solution. Every car (of any age) that I've seen has wings filled with mud.

Unless they are deliberately creating a situation that rots your sills out so that they can sell you a new car, I really don't understand why this has to happen.
 
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