Mudflaps and bouncing stones

[Knight44]

G'day,

Last week I installed mudflaps below the stone guard on our Goldstream, similar to the ones D4D has on his.

We were away over the weekend and, as we were driving over dirt roads, I heard stones hitting the back of the Prado. When we stopped I checked and there were quite a number of small stones lying on top of the Prado's rear bumper, and as this has not happened before when towing the Crown, I assume it was due to stones hitting the newly-installed mudflaps and bouncing forward.

Has anybody else with similar flaps experienced this?

I'm not quite sure what to do about it, as I want to protect the Crown. I'm not keen on a full width flap at the rear of the Prado. I could angle the flaps back to deflect the stones downwards, or take them off, cut them into strips (they're insertion rubber) and fix the strips to the underside of the Crown.

We're going away for a short trip next week, so I'll go with angling them back and see whether this works.

Cheers

[Mandrake]

I'd say you need to pull them back towards the van so the stones get bounced down towards the road ..
maybe a short length of chain to hold them at 45 degrees from vertical ??

Cheers

Steve

[MarkGU]

try a more of an angle down with your stone guard and make sure the material is loose NOT tight as tight shade cloth would act as a "trampoline" surface directing the rocks and stones back at your tow vehicle.
it needs to be loose to cushion the impact from the rocks and stones.

more aggressive angle on to mud flaps will help greatly too  

[GU Rich]

I agree with the "Shadecloth" looking a bit tight. if you stand there and throw a handful of stones at the deflector do they bounce back of drop down, remember that there shooting out the back of the vehicle rather quickly too.


rich

[Knight44]

Thanks for the comments, but it's not the shadecloth.

It's been on the camper since we bought it, and we haven't had a problem with stones until I added the rubber mudflaps.

Angling the mudflaps is probably the way I'll go.

Cheers