I’ve mentioned before that I believe one of the current industry-wide embarrassments of the entire automotive industry is the state of underbody aero/drip/splash/whatever trays and shields. These shields tend to be made from either plastic, thin sheet metal, some kind of pressed fiberboard, or what seems to be pressure-treated animal wastes, and they routinely rip or tear or break around their attachment points, and then flap around noisily until the owner just tears the damn thing off or does a quick repair with zip ties. I know that I’ve done both of these things to cars I’ve owned and friends’ cars. It’s incredibly common.
There’s a story making the rounds now about a man who took his 2017 Honda Civic into a Canadian Tire in the Newfoundland and Labrador province of Canada for an oil change, and while being serviced, Canadian Tire techs secured his damaged splash shield in place using zip ties. The Honda owner, Travis Jones, claims that the failure of these zip ties was the direct cause for him driving into a ditch a few months after the zip-tie repair.
Before the addition of the zip ties, when Jones first picked up the car from Canadian Tire, he described an incident where the car was “shaking violently” and struggling to reach highway speeds. He returned to the shop, which is when the zip-tie fix was undertaken.
The CBC has a video report about the incident:
Okay, so, I have a lot of thoughts here. And I suspect you do too. And I’ll preface everything I say by noting that I have no direct experience with this particular car, person, or repair. I’m basing my thoughts on similar repairs I have made to similar cars over the years, and similar situations where a splash shield came loose because of either wear or my half-assed zip-tie barely-a-repair. I’m a little embarrassed by how many times I’ve been in this situation, so let’s just say it is very healthily plural. Very.
In every incident I’ve been involved in with a splash shield – either plastic or metal – coming loose at highway speeds, the result I’ve noticed is a lot of awful noise made by the shield flapping around and scraping on the asphalt rapidly passing beneath the car. It’s annoying as hell, but I have never experienced a loss of control as a result. And of all the people I know to whom this has also happened, I’ve never heard anyone state they crashed as a result of a loose underbody shield.
Now, this is not to say it can’t happen, because anything is possible, right? It just feels extremely implausible to me based on my experience. Which again, is considerable.
As far as the ethics of Canadian Tire using zip-ties for this repair, I’m of two minds about it. If the customer didn’t want to spend the money to replace the whole damaged splash guard with a new one, there’s really not a whole lot else you could do. Sure, you could use big washers around the torn fastener holes or something, but that’s just a different sort of janky repair. Your options are to make some janky, good-enough fix, or just take the whole thing off and not think about it ever again, which I have also done multiple times.
Canadian Tire’s mistake here, I think, is not informing the customer about what they were doing. The customer should have been told their underbody splash/drip/whatever tray is all messed up, and then given the three options: spend the money and replace it; do a janky zip-tie fix that is technically temporary; or just yank it all off and deal with the repercussions, which, let’s be real here, are pretty minimal in the real world.
In fact, removing the splash/drip tray could allow you to see and identify engine fluid leaks before they get to be a problem, something an intact guard would hide. I’m sure there are efficiency/aero/cooling issues as well, but they tend to be pretty much ignorable for most drivers.
Canadian Tire offered Jones a $400 reimbursement should he choose to repair the shield, but Jones declined, believing he shouldn’t have to pay out of pocket for the repair. Another offer for more money was tendered, and also rejected.
So what do we think here? I think Canadian Tire’s crime was lack of communication, and that’s not insignificant. Car owners deserve to have as much information as possible about the condition of their cars and the state of the repairs. So it seems Canadian Tire can definitely do better there.
At the same time, I just can’t fathom how a loose splash guard could send a car into a ditch; I suppose it could hypothetically get caught in axles and wheels or tie rods or something, but the condition of the guard that Jones shows in the video doesn’t seem to suggest that level of mangling. Driving with a flapping or loose underbody tray is so wildly common that I’m just having trouble accepting it’s the sort of thing that would cause loss of control of a car?
I don’t know, though; maybe the noise and chaos of a flapping, scraping shield caused Jones to panic? I really can’t say.
But I can wonder, and I definitely am doing just that. And I think a decent takeaway from all this would be that any shop should at least tell you about what they’re repairing on your car and how they’re doing it. That part I’m sure of, at least.
Also, Jones did pick a good color for his Civic.
(thanks for the tip, Vic!)
My 2008 Mazda3 hatch, owned from 2009 to 2015 by me, had a gigantic hole in its splash guard. Caused by prior oil change techs yanking it down and not actually undoing it. They’d just pry it to get to the filter. Well, doing that repeatedly caused the plastic to break.
That hole eventually let rocks and sand/water and other debris onto the A/C and serpentine belts which ran right by there – causing them to be prematurely worn.
Instead of buying a pricey new splash guard, my shade tree mechanic friend and I cut a piece of an oil jug off and attached it to edge of the splash guard that was broken and had a hole. We then zip-tied it into place and voila, no more hole and no more water intrusion onto my (newly replaced) belts.
My current Mazda6 (a 2016 that I just passed a decade of ownership with) has its splash guard(s) intact but I and my oil change shop of choice have had to replace the little plastic fasteners multiple times as they just wear out.
I see cars every day with their splash shield things dragging the pavement. Their owners seem to either not know or not care.
For serious janky repairs, use the metal zip ties, not the plastic ones. Come on folks, step up your jankynessindex!
Here in Kentucky, we call it “redneck engineering.”
As a person who moved from the US to Canada 23ish years ago, one thing I have learned is not to go to Canadian Tire for repairs. They seem to go through techs like crazy and are not good value for what you pay.
When I first moved to Canada, I saw a Canadian Tire store and thought it was just some massive tire warehouse. I never bothered to go in until I was looking for something kitchen related and my college roommate suggested C.T. I thought he was pulling my leg until I went in and discovered that the place is like a Wal Mart.
I’ve only used zip ties to hold internal bits together…for example, securing the headlight bulb socket to the housing after the little clips broke off. In that case, this was a shop’s repair; my dad owned the vehicle at the time, and they let him know about it. To me that was the big issue described in this article; the shop failed to communicate.
That being said, I’m not understanding how a stray guard or shield could cause this sort of problem. I don’t have too much experience with vehicles having low ground clearance though.
Everyone has had a negative experience with these undertrays.
However, the VAST majority of the damage caused to them comes from oil change monkeys, ever under the threat of the clock, removing them in a way that goes against the factory service manual. If you’ve got 10 minutes to change the oil and there is a plastic shield in the way, it’s gonna get damaged.
Then, to add insult to injury, the same clueless consumer who demands 10 minute oil changes will ignore the dragging sound under their car until it ‘goes away’. It’s an extremely efficient way to put microplastics into the waterways.
“The replacement piece costs how much?!?”, and that’s where the tray went.
Much of the purpose of these things is airflow management, not underbody protection anyways. So the average consumer is happy to allow it to escape and never return.
Canadian Tire has a well-deserved reputation for doing bad work (lots of upselling, to the point of a serious scandal back in the 80s, failing to inflate tires to the proper pressures, etc.). It’s not universal; at one point a local Canadian Tire was one of the best BMW repair shops in town because their lead tech was an enthusiast. Suffice it to say they got that rep the hard way: they earned it.
They should have told him about the repair.
That said, this guy can’t drive for poop if he goes off the road because a small, lightweight cover came off the bottom of his car. That should cause a noise, maybe cut a wire or something because it is metal, but not redirect a 3000lb+ car. I almost wish it went to court so CT’s lawyers could tear off his underbelly pan (metaphorically) in court.
To quote the great Bugs Bunny, “what an ultra-maroon.”