I live in Deepest, Darkest Dorset, beautiful in the summer (if you know how to dodge the tourist traffic) but where every autumn our generous farmers share more of the contents of their fields with us via our roads. I also live in a county where our council has to justify its gritting budget by spreading on completely dry surfaces as soon as the temperature falls to 3°C.
Suffice it to say that my shiny new RF doesn’t stay shiny for long. These cars are FABULOUS, but they do attract dirt. I mean they REALLY are dirt magnets.
So I thought I might mitigate this by shelling out £200 on some genuine (but minuscule) Mazda mud flaps, supplied and fitted by Magna Mazda in Poole…
…probably the biggest waste of £200 I have ever spent. My advice would be to save your money and buy some quality car cleaning products instead!
When the temperature gets lower than that the cold makes water vapour come out the atmosphere and it is deposited on the road as ice, therefore your criticism does not as they say “hold water”
[quote=Mr_RF]
Suffice it to say that my shiny new RF doesn’t stay shiny for long. These cars are FABULOUS, but they do attract dirt. I mean they REALLY are dirt magnets.
So I thought I might mitigate this by shelling out £200 on some genuine (but minuscule) Mazda mud flaps, supplied and fitted by Magna Mazda in Poole…
…probably the biggest waste of £200 I have ever spent. My advice would be to save your money and buy some quality car cleaning products instead!
This is the result after less than three weeks…
[/quote]
They are far too small too make any difference, you should have looked at them before purchase and not been “taken in”
We live in an agricultural area of Aberdeenshire my car will be worse than that after a day at the moment.
As I have said before in another post about mudflaps, could not see the benefit of fitting them. However each car owner is different and I respect this.
I too live in an “agricultural” area with tractors leaving mud, manure and other stuff all over the roads so when I decided to have the “mudflaps” fitted I was under no illusion that things so small would actually do anything, any more than the much larger ones that were fitted to my other vehicles. No, the reason that I had them was purely “visual” inasmuch that to my eye it made the trim/linings in the wheel-arches look finished. A useless accessory? Probably, but aren’t many accessories and “bling” fitted for no other reason than that the owners thinks that they look great. Your picture - I would have twice as much crud on my ND after one trip on a busy “tractor” day.
I have them fitted myself and agree they are very small, however even if larger they would not totally stop mud etc being deposited on the car. Like Countryboy I think they look ok, just glad I didn’t pay full price and saved by fitting myself.
They’re no different (or cheaper) for the Mk3, but you’ll only buy them once and they finish off that area nicely. Would I buy them if I’d known how ineffective they were? Probably… yes!
Re. mudflaps on the NC - they have made a difference to the amount of muck that my car collects (I live right on the edge of Sheffield, half a mile from the border with rural Derbyshire hence farm mud on many of the roads I use).
As I have said before terrible value for something that must cost at the most £5 each to make and is very ineffective. I have had my car lowered (therefore more of the wheels are under the arches!) and that has probably had more effect and cost less than £400 with many more benefits i.e handles better, looks better and stays cleaner
Yes from what I‘ve seem the ND mudflaps are smaller and whilst they look good and finish the car off nicely, they are tiny and as far as I can tell make no difference at all as mudflaps. I had some nice body-coloured flaps fitted to my NB that definitely helped, but I think they were bigger.
Guys, for those of you who want to improve the efficiency of your ND mudflaps, may I make a suggestion.
Get yourself some 3mm to 5mm thick plastic or stiff rubber. Using cardboard make templates for creating extensions to the existing mudflaps that increase the size and blend into the curves of the wheel arches and follow. On the inside follow the form of the flat face of the existing plastic mudflaps where they fasten to the wheel arch. You should only need a two templates, one for the front and one for the rear arches. When you are satisfied with the shape use the templates as guides for cutting the same shapes from the plastic/rubber. You can then fastened these to the flat parts of the plastic mudflaps either using a good adhesive, self tapping or pop-rivets. The OEM mudflaps will provide a good area for fastening the extensions too without requiring modification to the existing bodywork and the black extensions should be no more obtrusive than the existing black plastic wind deflectors already fitted to the rear arches.
Sorry I can’t provide pictures (as I don’t have mudflaps on my car) but I have studied pictures of the Mazda mudflaps and don’t see why this shouldn’t work. I would certainly give it a try.
I hope that this is clearer than the mud spraying up the side of your car!