Mud Flaps…

When I bought this RV, in Feb. 2016, I’d noticed right off that there was a mud flap missing from behind the dual wheels, passenger side rear. The drivers side flap was in excellent condition. The missing flap was something that is easily rectified for very little money so I didn’t make a big deal about it when I bought. Always intended to head into Mexico and have it replaced down there as I’d get the best low cost work down there. It’s sort of important for me to hire people to work on the RV for me these days, not because I’ve gotten soft so much as the dizziness I expirience when I’m working underneath a RV. And replacing a missing mud flap would qualify. Not to mention getting sand in your shorts working under there without a nice cement slab.

What the job entailed was for the guys I hired to try to remove the 5/16″ bolts holding it to a welded in place bar attached to the chassis. There are 4 bolts holding each mud flap on either side of the RV and of course they are in piss poor shape. I authorized them to remove the OK flap for a sample of what we’d need and doing that caused a few of the old bolts to be broken. Not a problem. Never hurts to install new hardware on a job like this.

With the old, but good, flap removed, I found that it’s 23 & 1/2″ wide, 14″ tall and 3/16″ thick. It has 4 holes running across the upper area, positioned down 1″ from the top edge. The holes are 1/4″ in diameter and spaced 3 & 3/4″ from one edge, followed by 3 more holes each 5 & 1/4″ apart. This leaves 4″ free space to the other edge.

I bought 8 – 5/16″ X 1/2″ bolts, along with flat washers, and a package of 7 – 5/16″ self locking nuts. They only came in packs of 7. Gah! But, when I got home, I checked my stock and sure enough, I had a couple of that size. Buying extra pays off sometimes.

Here is the older flap ready to be reinstalled with the bolts inserted. There are two metal bars that go on the outside of the rubber to help give it support, one on each side…you can make out it’s outline on the rubber. It’s a stiffener for the rubber, to help prevent it from tearing too early in it’s life cycle.

Here’s a shot (below) of the ‘new’ flap installed after we cut it to the right size and drilled the 4 holes. The supplier gave us twice as much rubber as needed because they only had 2/16″ (1/8″) available and thought I might want enough for two flaps to give double thickness since my old flap was 3/16″ thick. I’m thinking, nah, I can keep the 2nd one as a spare and if necessary, I can put a metal bar on the bottom of the new 1/8″ flap to weigh it down. Yeah. That’ll do it.

Anywho, the new flap went in and looks great. Only thing I didn’t get a pic of was those metal bars that go on the other side of the RVs bracket. Readers will just need to imagine it. The bars are about 23″ wide by 1″ tall, with 4 holes of course, matching the holes in the chassis. They are basically long clamps to keep the flap from, ahem, flapping too much while driving.

   So that’s all there is to installing a new mud flap. Not, yawn, the most interesting posting I’ve ever uploaded, but well, there ya go.