Scraping Noise Under Car Dragging Splash Shield Try This DIY Quick Fix

What is that noise? Unbelievable. Let's take a peek. Oh, my splash shield's hanging down. Perfect. Really quick, let's talk about what a splash shield is supposed to do. Essentially, what it's gonna do is it's gonna cover the bottom aspect of the engine compartment, and what it's supposed to do is prevent water or even debris from making its way up and inside of the engine compartment. Of course, there's a lot of electronic things that can happen inside of here, and if anything gets wet that isn't necessarily supposed to, it can cause an issue. Underneath most car hoods, you're gonna be able to find the battery. Now, the battery isn't necessarily something that you have to worry about getting wet unless of course it has the vents up along the top and for some reason, somebody left the caps off. If that was the case, moisture can make its way in there and, of course, the battery's gonna go bad over time. Other than that, you're typically gonna have a lot of electrical components all inside here. This one, in particular, has its computer or PCM right out in the open. Now that, of course, is gonna have some electrical wiring going right to it and if moisture made its way inside there, you can imagine what might happen if the car's computer went bad.

Other than that, a lot of times, there's gonna be a fuse box located underneath the hood on those passenger cars. You can go ahead and take off that cover right there, and you should be able to find some fuses. You can imagine what water does to circuitry. Of course, it's gonna cause corrosion, corrosion creates resistance, and resistance is gonna cause an issue with your electrical system. And, of course, you wanna think about the aerodynamics of the car itself, the way that the wind is gonna be able to go up and over and, of course, underneath the car. If there's anything on the top or underneath it that's restricting the flow of air, that's, of course, gonna decrease fuel economy overall. So now we safely raised and supported the car so I can get under it and we can have a look at what's going on. Right under here is where that splash shield's supposed to be. And as you can tell, ours in particular, well, maybe somebody didn't bolt it on right here, it started hanging down a little bit, got caught, and it ended up breaking.

Now, obviously, this is a plastic splash shield right here. Commonly, especially on four-wheel drive, pickup trucks, or something alike, you're gonna have a metal skid plate under here. Why is it metal as opposed to plastic like this one right here? Well, of course, if you're on a four-wheel-drive truck, you might be kind of going a little bit off-roading, you might bonk it off of a rock or something. And, of course, that metal shield is supposed to protect everything underneath here. On this particular passenger vehicle, for some reason, they didn't really think you were gonna be bonking off of rocks or anything like that. They were kind of just making sure that you don't splash a whole bunch of debris up and inside the engine compartment. And of course, like I said before, they're also thinking about the aerodynamics of the thing. They're putting it inside their special wind tunnel and making sure that wind went under and over it the way that it should for optimal fuel efficiency.

Now, since we're under here, we might as well talk about fixes for this. Of course, you could potentially call up a parts dealer of some sort and see if they have a replacement splash shield for you. Typically, it's more than likely gonna cost you a couple 100 bucks, or maybe a little less if you're getting one used someplace. For me personally, something like this isn't really necessarily something that I'm very worried about, so what I'm gonna do is just completely take it down and then I'll show you how to fix it up right quick.

Obviously, trying to fix something like this, there's gonna be multiple ways you can go about doing it. For me personally, I'm just gonna use a drill with a small drill bit and some of these wire ties right here. You could also try to use some plastic glue of some sort, or maybe even some tape if you just happen to have tape laying around. Now, as you can tell for our particular application here, it's not necessarily broken so that there's a giant hole in it anywhere. If it was broken to the point that it had a giant hole and it wasn't something that I could patch up, then I would have to just go ahead and replace it. For me personally, I just kinda wanna stitch up this crack right here, and then we should be good to go. With all of our holes drilled out, let's go ahead and turn this over.

This's gonna be the side facing towards the engine compartment. Now, essentially, I just wanna line up all these holes, we're gonna put our wire ties through, start them all in, and then we'll snug them up. Okay. We have them all started. Make sure you line your two pieces up so they're as close as possible, and then, of course, we'll snug it out. Obviously, we're not gonna leave these just hanging out like this, so let's go ahead and trim off the excess. Now let's turn it over and have a look. Okay. This looks great. Obviously, for your particular application, you might want to add a couple more or maybe even a couple less. It really depends on how big your crack is and exactly how much work you actually want to put into it. For me personally, I can shake this all around and it's not falling apart. If you ask me, it's gonna block the majority of the water or even debris from making its way inside the engine compartment. I think we're a-okay. Let's get it up in the car.

Okay, friends, so we got the splash shield back up here, and if you ask me from under here, it looks pretty amazing. If I was standing up there and I happened to take a peek under here, I probably wouldn't even know that it was broken in the first place, and I especially wouldn't know that I went ahead and fixed it with some easy-peasy wire ties.

I hope you liked the video. I hope you learned a little something. If it helped you out and you want to talk about it, leave it in the comment section below because I always love to hear from you. If you liked the video like I said, go ahead and smash on the like button for me, it would mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe, ring the bell that way there you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.