Rad Rubber Designs Engine Splash Guard Installation and Review
Today we’re going to be installing engine splash guards. Those are the liners that are in your front wheel wells that cover up your engine. Somewhere along the way mine got blown off. I’m sure it was from driving too fast through some high water but either way, we’re gonna install new ones today that’ll keep the mud and the water from splashing up on the engine. We’re gonna be using a great product from Rad Rubber Designs. I’ll show you about the product but i’ll also include the link down in the description. definitely check them out.
All right, so as you can see, you can definitely see my engine straight through the wheel well here. There should be some kind of plastic guard up here blocking this area right here so that water and mud can’t get up on the engine. But as you can see mine are not there. You can actually see a little bit of the remnants right here. They got torn off either because of age or because of the force of water and mud blowing up into the engine bay or potentially both but either way, we need to get the old clips out of there and that way we can go ahead and install the new engine splash guards made by Rad Rubber.
All right the first thing we need to do is get rid of the clips. These are the clips that were holding in the old engine splash guard. I’ve got this handy little interior clip tool – you can pick this up on Amazon or at your local auto parts store. i’ll put the link down below but it makes it really easy just to pry up underneath there, just give it a pop like that, you don’t have to worry about breaking these because the Rad Rubber set comes with completely new clips – so you don’t need to worry about just breaking those off and it makes it super easy.
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If you’re like me you normally take instructions and just toss them. I know how to figure this out! I will say go ahead and give them a glance. there’s one important aspect that you need to understand which is that there’s some different size fasteners for the particular holes on these engine splash guards.
All right, I’ve got my now crumpled instructions and you can see here from the diagram that all of these holes take the 5/16” fasteners except for this one right over here on the bottom right that uses the 1/4” fastener. I’m taking these clips and i’m inserting it into the hole but i’m going to leave this little top part extended out until I get it pushed into the hole. Then I punch in the top piece and then I just repeat across all of the holes using the right size fastener for each one. You’ll notice there’s a little bit of play in the rubber – that is by design. that allows for the car to flex without tearing the rubber
I’ve got the driver’s side front panel finished. Now it’s time to do the driver’s side rear panel. Some of these were a little difficult to get in – nothing a few taps of a hammer won’t fix. Here’s the finished product – looking pretty good. You can tell it’s definitely got a little bit of give built into the design. It took literally about 10 minutes to get this thing installed – so now we just rinse and repeat on the other side.
This is the front passenger side engine guard. i’ve got the clips in here in three spots – the fourth one uses this 1/4” size fasteners and it was a little hard to find – but it’s actually on the side of this brace that holds the upper control arm.
Well there you have it – the Rad Rubber engine guard covers.
Rad Rubber Pros:
- This was really easy to install and only took me about 20 minutes total.
- The product instructions are really easy to follow and I appreciate the fact that the kit comes with new clips.
- The engine guards are made of really thick rubber. They’re probably about four times thicker than OEM.
- I really like that the design allows for flex between the body and the frame.
- I like the fact that it uses the OEM clips in the design because it makes it really easy to install.
- I also like the fact that it’s made by a small company.
Rad Rubber Cons:
- I do wish that the guards provided more coverage – especially around the upper control arm mounting points.
- The additional material that’s built into the design to allow for flex also looks kind of sloppy.
- It took several weeks to arrive but the owner’s had some logistical challenges lately and hopefully he’ll get those sorted out.
Overall, I highly recommend this product. It was easy to install. it’s made from a quality material and for the price i really don’t think you can beat it. Well, thanks for checking out our video. until next time we’ll see you on the trails.