Need a Quieter Ride? Add Carpeted Wheel Well Liners!

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Wheel well liners have been an immense pain to all detailers and owners of vehicles with these liners alike. They constantly build up road grime and salt, ice, and snow. So why would a manufacturer add these carpeted wheel well liners onto their vehicles?

These carpeted wheel well liners are there for one purpose, to deaden and lower road noise. Your vehicle’s tires are the only contact point to the ground, which means most of the noise of a car (outside of wind noise and engine sounds) comes from the tires themselves. Carpeted wheel liners work like acoustic panels, soak up the sound waves, and don’t allow them into the cabin.

So, what do brands have to contend with when adding wheel liners?

Every little aspect of designing a car has plenty of meetings, emails, and late nights trying to decide if specific things need to be added to the vehicle. I have no doubt carpeted wheel wells are one of those things. So what were the upsides and downsides they likely had to think about?

How to clean inner fender wheel wells

After researching, I found two ways to clean this wheel most easily.

1. Power washing it – Make sure to be careful when doing this, as power washing anything can damage it. However, at least some people find it highly successful and less time-consuming to 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 with that, or this one would work as well (Paid Link).
2. Scrubbing the wheel wells with a brush – After getting as much road grime as possible off the carpet, use a stiff brush to agitate the dirt out of the fibers. Then wash and repeat until you are done! While this is the more complex way of doing it, it is less likely to damage anything. Something like this brush is perfect (Paid Link).

While 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 (Paid Link)!
• I’m a big fan of Rain-X, and this car wash soap concentrate should be perfect for washing your car (Paid Link).
• Finally, for the interior, this Wet/Dry Vaccum is imperative (Paid Link) for cleaning up the inside of your vehicle.

Four Brands That Use Carpeted Wheel Well Liners

While it is difficult to say how many cars, trucks, and SUVs have carpeted wheel wells, a couple of vehicles keep coming up.

1. GM trucks and cars

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.

2. Chrysler cars

Specifically, I have seen that the Chrysler 300C has this; however, I’m sure there are others.

3. Nissan

I have also seen some reports of Nissan adding this style of carpeting into their 2009-2015 Nissan Maxima!

4. Ford Escape

The last generation Ford Escape also has carpeting in their wheel wells.

Conclusion

While this may at first seem like an annoying and pointless thing to do to a vehicle, it is needed to give you the best experience possible. 

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.