Almost lost a mud flap...

willald wrote:

Executive wrote:
FYI. Mud flaps are not to keep your toad clean. Mud flaps are there for the protection of other vehicles following you. Your rear tires, like those on trucks, pick up rocks and debris from the road and hurl them skyward looking for the windshield of some poor unsuspecting fool using the highway with you. The mud flap normally will direct that downward back toward the pavement.....Dennis

...With several feet of overhang behind the rear axles, and a towed vehicle behind that....I'm having a hard time understanding how debris/rocks thrown upward by the rear tires could hit anything but the underside of the Motorhome or your own towed vehicle. Sooo, not quite following you on how mud flaps would be for protection of vehicles other than your own.

If we were talking about a dually pickup or other vehicle with very little rear overhang and not towing anything, I'd agree. That's not really the case, though.

Be that as it may, I definitely will be fixing the mud flap before the Motorhome rolls again. We don't have any trips planned for a while, anyway.

Will

I've seen something that is pretty obvious to me, but have been vigorously debated here in the past. When you have a flap that hangs low below the rear bumper of a class A, you can do significant damage to a toad. The problem is that the coach bobs up and down, and occasionally the rear flap with touch the road and sweep the surface. This can pick up gravel and pelt the toad. On one of my many trips from the east coast to AK I was filling up on the Kenai, and noticed a guy pulling a car with an absolutely trashed windshield. He had an older gas coach that sat pretty low, and had a serious rear overhang. He also had a flap across the rear that was about 4" off the road, when everything was level. I asked about the windshield and he didn't have a clue as to why it was slowing being reduced to a pile of shards. It literally had at least five side to side cracks, and I was surprised that it wasn't bowed inward at that point. I mentioned that it was probably his mud flap doing the damage, and he looked at me like I was an idiot. Flaps that are high and tight to the duals are no issues. a giant rubber squeegee riding just above the road, and 12' or more behind the duals? maybe not the greatest idea, IMHO.