I ran over a tire shred the other day and it ripped out a piece of the stock under panel. Surprisingly, no other damage occured.

My question is...will driving without this panel affect my daily driving? Is it just to help keep dust and debris out of the engine bay?

I am asking because i want to remove the remaining pieces.

Thx,
Xris

 

A lot of people remove their underbody panel, and aside from their engine bay getting dirty faster, don't seem to have any other problems.

 

cool, yeah that's what i figured. It doesn't rain much here in vegas so i should be good.

 

no underpanel is OK. I've been w/o mine for about 20k and all is well.

as far as the tire goes consider yourself lucky. I've nailed two so far, first one took out my oil filter @ 5am in the NJTP. Second one destroyed my bumper. All this happened in a 6 month period.

 

under body panel adds to high speed stability. I ran mine w/o it for a while and got another one after a few months.
btw it's 3 pieces, one is prety expensive, while 2 are cheaper.

 

If you live in vegas you will be fine. Wouldnt recommend it if you live in a snowy climate.

 

If you must have it opt for the aluminum piece. I have had mine off for almost 50K miles. Just don't take it in the muds or RallyCrossing :}

 

You'll be fine; you're just lucky that's all that did. Twice I've had that happen to me; and not just a piece, they were the whole re-treads. At least on the second one it happened right in front of me and to 2 other cars behind me. We finally got the trucker to pull over and all 3 of us were pissed. His insurance paid to replace my rear bumper, the Rouch Mustangs front bumper and fog lights, and the poor Nissan Sentras bumper/grill/windshield wiper tank, radiator/etc. Guess I can count my lucky stars too; only minimal damage, others were not so lucky...

 

Thanks for the replies.

It seems that these truckers need to be held more responsible for leaving their tire debris on the road.

It's already bad enough with their driving (here in Vegas, they drive and change lanes like bats out of hell) and they also drop rocks and debris that ends up cracking our windshields our chipping our paint. Sux man!

 

tru that...they should act responsibly and change tires when appropiate.

 

I had mines off for approximately 38k miles. Its probably okay but I get nervous when it rains really heavy.