Let me guess, you just bought a new car, and noticed it had a carpeted wheel well, also known as an inner fender! Much like me after finding out about these carpeted wheel wells, you ask yourself, “why does my vehicle have carpeted wheel wells”?
Why carpeted wheel liners?
It is pretty simple actually, and it is not just to annoy you, and is really the exact opposite. While it may seem that these vehicle designers must be insane, this really is to deaden the sound from road noise.
Car manufacturers are constantly trying to find ways to make things more comfortable for you when you are driving your car. One way to do that is cut down on the road, and tire noise!
The easiest, and probably the best way to do this is by making it so that the sound itself is soaked up by these carpeted inner fender liners.
Pros of carpeted wheel liners
- Cuts down dramatically on road noise
- Yeah, that’s about it
Cons of these carpeted inner fender liners
- Catches a lot of debris like dirt and snow
- Difficult to clean
How to clean inner fender wheel wells
After doing some research, it appears there are two ways that are easiest to clean this type of wheel well.
- Power washing it – Make sure to be careful when doing this, as power washing anything can damage it. However it seems at least some people are finding it extremely successful and less time consuming to just spray it down with a pressure washer and move on! This will be the quickest way. This one is a great option here to help out with that, or this one would work as well.
- Scrubbing the wheel wells with a brush – After getting as much of the road grime that you can off of the carpet, use a hard brush to agitate the dirt out of the fibers. Then wash and repeat until you are done! While this is the more difficult way of doing it, it is less likely to damage anything. Something like this brush would probably be perfect.
While you are cleaning those wheel wells, here are some other products you may want to get while you are at it.
- I really like this turtle wax kit!
- I’m a big fan of Rain-X, and this car wash soap concentrate should be perfect for washing your car.
- Finally, for the interior, this Shop-Vac is imperative for cleaning up the inside of your car.
What vehicles have carpets wheel liners
While it is difficult to say how many cars, trucks, and SUVs have carpeted wheel wells, there do seem to be a couple vehicles that keep coming up.
GM trucks and cars
It seems most GM trucks like the 2014+ Chevy Silverado, and the GMC Sierra have this (Of which, did you know the GMC Sierra is also one of the only trucks that can come with AWD?). Also the C7 Corvette has had some online reports of having this carpeted inner fender liner.
Chrysler cars
Specifically I have seen that the Chrysler 300C has this, however I’m sure there are others.
Nissan
I have also seen some reports of Nissan adding this style of carpeting into their 2009-2015 Nissan Maxima!
Ford Escape
The last generation Ford Escape also has carpeting in their wheel wells.
Conclusion
While this might at first seem like an annoying and pointless thing (and unfortunately can’t get a robot vacuum to clean it like this one) to do to a vehicle, I am sure it is needed to give you the best experience possible.
I am sure if you really wanted to, you could find a way to remove the carpeting and be done with it, however I really do think the sound deadening that this feature provides far outweighs any downsides this gives.
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