Mud Flap Clearance - Should I be Concerned?

Trimmed off 4" front and rear and swapped to 275/70R17 A/T's giving me 15" from the ground to the bottom edge of the flap. Heading out for 12 days touring Utah running moderate trails (no extreme rock crawling).

I am wondering what the likelihood of destroying one or all of my mud flaps will be. It seems to me that rolling over a rock that is 15.1" or more is going to make direct contact with the flap. The question is, just how fragile are these things? I really don't want to have to take them off and get rock chips all over the new paint either. Worst of evils, I guess?

Oh, and yeah, I realize that the nerf bars are highly likely to be damaged. Rock sliders are on order and will be installed before the trip.

 

take a wrench and screwdriver with you and just remove them for the fun parts

they can be mushed and crunched with no issues, but also can rip all the plastic out from the wheel well too...so...

they are tough but ...if you really are on a crawl, take them off to be sure

 

They break pretty easily. I wouldn't expect them to last that long.

 

I trimmed mine about 3" and never had a problem since.

 

I took about 6" off my fronts after running them over during a river crossing a month ago, they do almost nothing now Lol, and I scrape my back ones all the time I fully expect them to break at some point that being said mud flaps aren't mandatory here so I don't really worry about it

 

This. I keep mine on for daily use to minimize the rock chips on the side. I take them off for the fun stuff.

 

what would be interesting is if someone would fab a bracket that a rubber flap could slide and lock into, then just slide it back out when crawling...

 

I dislike the new mud flaps (I have a 2013). For the same reasons you mentioned, about cracking them on a rock etc, I removed them front and rear about a year to 14 months ago. Recently I put a set of first gen mud flaps on the rear (I like the look of them and they are rubber) I did not use the metal bracket. I simply measured the holes, "drilled" them out and screwed them in with about 4 screw each side. They are flexible (they fold all the way back and touch the flares without being ripped out) and should not rip out (I will test it wheeling next month).

Here is how they look:

 

I like the little flexible flaps on my old 99 4runner. TONS of scraping, zero issues. they stay in shape and don't break nor break anything else...and i have squashed them pretty hard (exhaust pipe is another story with squashing)