Trailing arm shields / covers... leave or remove?

[rileydawgg]

As Ive been doing some reading, I noticed a lot of people have removed these from their cars. Is there a specific reason? Mine are in good shape, so no reason cosmetically to do anything... But just curious why remove? Is there a benefit to having them off?

[sdg3205]

Can of worms alert!

Word on the street is they lower drag and protect the TA's and TAB's.

Mine came off because the trio of M6s rotted out and it was easier to service a few items with them off anyway.

Your mileage may vary.

[dn010]

The main reasons I removed mine was:

1-ease of access while doing work under the car and

2-I removed them for about a year because they were noisy going over bumps. After that year I reinstalled them instead of having them lay around and it must have been an alignment issue because they never made a sound since.

If you do a search on this topic, I'm sure you'll find lots on the shield subject...

[Stainless]

Enough said:

http://dmctalk.org/showthread.php?1341-Anybody-that-still-runs-dustshields-on-their-D-is-a-GOSHDARN-COMMIE&highlight=commie

[Josh]

Mine were gone the first time I had the car on jackstands. lol.

[rileydawgg]

okay... well, good to know there isn't a consensus. My guess was for keeping road debris from going up there and some kind of air flow / drag. I guess I will leave them on for now until I need to remove... and then probably based on my degree of laziness at that moment leave them off or put them back on.