Mud Flaps

Julie,

Don't be temped to hang 2 or 3 truck mudflaps (or a single large rubber flap) at the back of your rig in such a way that it could drag on the ground. These tend to make the situation even worse.

What a lot of people have success with, is fitting a section of shade cloth between the camper and the bumper bar of the towing vehicle. This is usually permanently attached to the camper and attaches to the vehicle via shock-cord (eg: occy strap material).

Hope this helps.

Roachie

Hi Julie,

I don't think mud flaps will stop stones hitting your camper. When you trail a mud flap close enough to the ground to stop the stones it creates a low pressure area behind the flap which lifts stones into the path of the oncoming camper. Kind of stopping one problem and creating another.

You need to fit an effective stone guard to the front of the camper. There are many successful designs out there. Some are as simple as a piece of shade cloth hung loosely on a support frame. The idea is that they deflect the thousands of stones thrown up by the car onto the ground. While they wrok pretty well no system is perfect. From my experience stone guards are far more effective than mud flaps.

Duncs

Hi julie S

We just fitted mud flaps to the Patrol, used some insertion rubber available from Clarks Rubber, it's about 6mm thick and comes in 300mm wide roll, and we bought it by the metre. So we "custom" made our mudflaps and they work quite well. Still have the front to go, and I intend to buy more of the same material and make a continuos mudflap/flare and do away with the typical aftermark rubber flare that has the wire in it.

We also made a single mud flap from the same material to go across the rear of the Patrol to stop the rocks spitting out, hitting the camper and returning to the rear of the truck, as far as I could see, and conbtrary to what others have posted, I think it worked well, but I'm no expert on these matters. It reaches to with 80mm of the ground and judging by the amount of damage to the front side of it, seemed to deflect a lot of rocks!

hi all
keep in mind that in nsw all mud flaps must be 100mm of the ground cheers bill

I too was an advocate of the continuous flap across the back and learn't my lesson destroying a rear window on the canopy of our dual cab.
I now have a Patrol and have not altered the mud flaps but put a stone guard on the van A frame made from shade cloth loosely fitted to a frame. This stops the tennis effect. Has worked well for 7 years .

Gday Julie
If you want, you can call into my workshop and select any type of rubber that you want.I am also cheaper than the other co that sells rubber.
We also have the technology to cut the rubber for you and punch holes if necessary.
Murray
PS. just send a mesage

Do you live in Melbourne.
Julie

Gooday,
Used a full length flap for a couple of years, helped but even though it was 6mm insertion it used to lift up AT LEAST 50Mm 2inches with the air flow and was not really good on stony roads.
The other thing to consider is that an interrupted air flow under the vehicle COULD damage your differential as modern vehicles are made to fine tolerances.
I have made one from shadecloth that goes under the drawbar and attached to the tow bar, with Octupus straps attaching it to the caravan chassis. Am still fine tuning it as I have had some trouble with the Occy straps snapping on tight turns. However a new modification under way now and will test it next week as we are heading off for a month.
Cheers,
Boroma604