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Fitting After Market Rally Mud Flaps

Introduction

Fitting rally-style mud flaps is a popular modification. They help protect your car from stone chips and tar deposits and cosmetically enhance the appearance of the car, sometimes giving the appearance of more aggressive stance.

Selecting Your Mud Flaps

There are many companies offering mud flaps ranging in price from £75 to £200+ for genuine Prodrive versions. Usually, the more you pay the better quality (typically thickness) of the material used, laser cut bracketry, stainless fittings, genuine Subaru ‘clips’, and good fitting guide/instructions.

There are many different colours available, many with optional logos, graphics and lettering. The author prefers the closest colour to his car, which was WR Blue previously and now Black, although for White cars both White or Red would look nice.

Procedure

The fitting procedure slightly varies between suppliers. Most mainstream suppliers have good instructions with illustrations so the focus here is to add detail to augment the existing instructions.

1. Apply a degreasing cleaner to remove grease and wax from the supplier mud flaps.

2. If you have logos or lettering, apply your stickers. Note you may want to offer the flaps up to your vehicle to ensure you select the best location.

3. Polish both sides of your mud flaps! This will help future cleaning as this gets more difficult with age.

4. Using the manufacturers supplied instructions, perform a trial fitting of all the bracketry, nuts and bolts, etc (on the bench). This will confirm you have the correct parts and if offering up to your car will help you visualise the install before starting.

Note: To minimise the risk of injury we recommend you ensure your disks are cool and the car is safely secured at all times when working under your vehicle.

5. Most manufacturers instructions tell you to remove the wheels. Although slightly more awkward, the author manages to fit these mud flaps without removing the wheels. The rear fittings are typically easier as no drilling is usually required. The front fittings typically require drilling one or two holes under the front wheel arch. For this, the author has found that turning the front wheel facing inward provides the access required to squeeze a drill in. This saves a considerable amount of time if you don’t need to remove each wheel.

6. The remainder should be documented in the instructions you have.

Degrease, then polish mud flaps.

Perform trial fit of all bracketry.