I have an opinion on this, but was looking to hear what the forum thinks.

My front dust shield on the driver's side is falling apart and scraping against my rotor.

On the passenger side the dust shield is long gone.

My question is do I need the dust shields?

Is there any issues without having them?

In a perfect world I'd like to replace them, but I have a feeling that this is going to be one of those dealer only items that's severely overpriced.

Seeing as I have the passenger side shield missing, and I never noticed anything before hand I'm thinking this is an item that might not be necessary.

 

Short answer is no, you don't need them.
​​​​​​They help protect your brakes from getting water and mud splashed onto the rotors, they theoretically may help direct air through the vents (in some vehicles, probably not on ours) and they do precious little else. I doubt you'll ever notice them gone.

If you get rid of them just trim them, as they space out the unit bearing and etc from the knuckle. Don't take them completely out. Make sense?

 

I've read about the usual functions of the shields...but I just don't think it will make enough of a difference in the real world for me to care.

Thanks for the tip on the spacing function. The passenger side has no trace left of any shield and the problem on the driver's side is they disintegrated at the mounting points, which is what would give me my spacing as you pointed out.

Does that little bit of dust shield really space the unit bearing out? As in without it things won't line up properly?

 

I read that once, not sure, if I remember right it was the nuts bottoming out on the unit bearing before it was completely tight or something and they posted a pic and someone said the dust shield spaces it.

At any rate it hurts nothing to leave it in and is in fact way easier than removing them.

 

Problem is that I have nothing to leave in. It's all been returned to the earth where it came from, one rust flake at a time.

 

Run it till proven otherwise I say. The portion I'm referring to is inaccessible with the outers fully assembled. I'm sure the inner part is still there.

 

The fronts on ours have a duct to help funnel air into the rotor to help with cooling. I would replace them...