Anyone here with an E65 fitted with factory mud flaps?
Strange thing is that they are really meaty and solid bit of rubber riveted onto the wings/fenders and rear bumper however, the side that fit to the body and flare outwards to match the wheel width are stuck to the car with double-sided sticky tape.
What a load of crap --- so far after 5 fixes at the dealer the two on the right side and now falling off again.
Taken the problem up with BMW service and waiting for a response.
I had them on an e36 years ago. They just allowed moisture to trap between them and the paint and caused rust. They would also scrape the road under very hard cornering. Not had any since.
In one way I agree but the E65 has such wide wheels the rear of the fenders/wings and the rear bumper would be effectively "sand-blasted" by road debris and the paint removed anyway.
Some countries, such as Norway & Finland, make mud flaps a mandatory fitment due to the many dirt track roads (not so many these days) so if the BMW flaps are such crap how do they fare in these hostile lands.
I have complained to BMW UK and am awaiting their response (Ho Ho).
The actual bit that gets me is the use of double sided sticky tape to fix them to the body. This might be Ok for sticking kids pictures to the fridge door or photos to a frame but mud-flaps to a car's bodywork??????????????
Nissan use DS tape to stick door bump strips to the old Laurel and I have a roll of this stuff and by Christ is it sticky and it holds as well as a nut and bolt!
In some cases number plates are fixed using this stuff but the BMW stuff looks and feels like the £2 a roll stuff you can by in Tesco or Smiths.
Funny you say that John.
I had a pair of Cal-Custom stainless steel spray shields with rubber mud flap extensions on my 350CID engined Mk1 Ford Granada in the 1970s. When loaded (car was about 30mm lower than standard) I used to get a grinding noise on cornering and I thought it was the tyres scraping the arch flange so I bent them under and reworked the fenders/wings out slightly. Looked really nice but still the grinding continued.
I only realised what it was when some fool decided to dent the OS wing and I had to remove the thing that the noise stopped on left corners.
Boom Boom!
Hugh
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