Mud Flaps-Minimum Length

I removed my OEM flaps because they are long, drag on things, and are ugly. But you see their effectiveness when you have mud and crud on your sills/rockers/bed.

So two questions:

What is the minimal effective length needed to provide any real protection from wheel spray?

Secondly, are there any aftermarket flaps that are already cut short (and aren’t stupidly expensive)?

I’m on the fence about selling my OEM’s or just trimming them.

Lastly, any source for replacement rivets, or whatever the stock two-piece tabs are called? It was cold when I removed mine and half of them snapped off.

Thanks!

 

I don’t know anything about aftermarket, but I trimmed about 5 inches off of my stock flaps and am pretty happy with the results.

I broke some of the fasteners too and used these.

$8 uxcell 20Pcs Rivet Fastener Flaps Bumper Fender Clips

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0167X3M3A/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_shnkCb87QY2KP

I had them laying around to use on my four wheeler, and they worked just fine on the Taco as well.

 

There is a fairly simple way to determine what length flap will give you what kind of protection. Find yourself a good old fashioned wooden yard stick. Next, place one end of the yard stick under the rear edge of either the front or rear tire. Slowly raise the other end of the yard stick up until it touches the lower body panel of the truck. Think of this as "the theoretical path of a stone." Now figure that your flap would have to reach the top edge of the yard stick to give you that much protection. Obviously the longer the stick, the further back a stone would have to travel. But, to get that level of protection, you'd have to lower the flap. You'll quickly see that shorter flaps give you much less protection, but will catch / drag on fewer things. Conversely, longer flaps will give you much more protection, but catch / drag on things much easier. The other thing you'll see is that longer front flaps are much more critical to protecting your rockers from damage than rear flaps. That's why I installed Toyota running boards on my Tacoma. They act as (much) longer front flaps and virtually eliminate chips from my front tires.

 

I bought Plasticolor universals for mine. Think I spent $60 for 4 and did it myself.

Screw those clips, I bolted mine up. Had them 6 years so far with zero issues.

 

Ditto on this did the exact same thing

 

Did you use the stock bolt holes? Also, for those and similar universals, did you use any kind of spacers since the OEM flaps have recessed screw holes?

 

No flaps at all on mine, just running boards for the old fuck that I drive around sometimes. No issues at all and I drive on dirt roads.

 

I did use the stock holes, just measured how I wanted the flap and punched holes in the flap to line up. No spacers.