Where Mud Goes After Driving on It

[JFrye]

To make a short story long, I pulled off the road to do some night time photography and I ended up in a mud pit. The only way out was forward. I disabled ESC and bounced off the rev limiter on my journey to find traction from 1st to 4th gear at 2 miles per hour. I got out easily but cleaning was the difficult part. I expected the undercarriage and engine bay to be absolutely coated, which they were. But just in case you're not aware, there's pockets in your sideskirts where debris can accumulate after being thrown in by the front tires and the only way to remove them is to reach inside and pull them out with your hands.

tl;dr:
I estimate that I removed 2-3lbs of mud from the inside of my sideskirts right behind the front wheels. All of this was done by loosening it with water and scooping it out by hand as there is no way for a pressure washe to reach it, even from the bottom.

Might be a good place to put a hide-a-key, but also a place to check after driving on loose surfaces like mud and gravel, and when winter is over.

Please learn from my mistakes, I've got enough for everyone

 

[BRGT350]

yep, after covering LSPR a few years ago, I had mountains of mud, sand, grass, leaves, rocks, and muck packed into the side skirts of the Fiesta Movement car. I used a power washer and just let it flush out the skirts until the water came out clear. On my personal ST, I use mud flaps that extend all the way to the ground and some plates mounted under the rear doors to protect as much of the skirts as possible. In the spring, I put the car on jack stands and flush out the entire underbody.

This was after one day at LSPR.

Dirty ST after LSPR by Bryan Redeker, on Flickr
I had a picture someplace showing all of the muck that came out of the car, but I had to take it down after the lawyers got ahold of the picture showing the car on jack stands being cleaned.