Baskets to keep leaves out of your engine bay

[DannyUncanny]

With fall here, it's a good time to check out your leaf collection points, right behind the lower hinges of your front doors. This is where much of the gunk that comes off your windshield eventually winds up. The rest of it gets spit forward into the engine bay. You can clean the hinge spot out by carefully removing the felt wheel liners and accessing it from the wheel well side, it's a little bit of a chore. Keep close tabs on the plastic snaps holding the felt liner in place, they are all different sizes/styles so you have to put them back in the right spot.

But if you happen to have access to a 3D printer, I've also recently published some 3D printed baskets to help keep the leaves contained in the first place and somewhere you can easily scoop them out. These baskets clip into the back corner of the engine bay where the windshield basin drains on each side and filter out leaves and pine needles. You just need to print them in some high temperature filament like ASA or ABS since these are inside the engine bay where it gets pretty hot.

https://makerworld.com/en/models/1838206-ford-maverick-windshield-runoff-strainer

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[Cancunbadlands]

@MABETT has an option

 

[White Thunder]

@MABETT has an option

What is it???

 

[phoneguyinpgh]

I've got those, they work well.

 

[Waterick]

Have to wonder if the baskets work better than the Mabett solution. I already have the latter, will see how well it works very soon.

 

[Glen Baker LLC]

These look more comprehensive than Mabett's.
If you are into 3D printing, I guess it's a win-win

With fall here, it's a good time to check out your leaf collection points, right behind the lower hinges of your front doors. This is where much of the gunk that comes off your windshield eventually winds up. The rest of it gets spit forward into the engine bay. You can clean the hinge spot out by carefully removing the felt wheel liners and accessing it from the wheel well side, it's a little bit of a chore. Keep close tabs on the plastic snaps holding the felt liner in place, they are all different sizes/styles so you have to put them back in the right spot.

But if you happen to have access to a 3D printer, I've also recently published some 3D printed baskets to help keep the leaves contained in the first place and somewhere you can easily scoop them out. These baskets clip into the back corner of the engine bay where the windshield basin drains on each side and filter out leaves and pine needles. You just need to print them in some high temperature filament like ASA or ABS since these are inside the engine bay where it gets pretty hot.

https://makerworld.com/en/models/1838206-ford-maverick-windshield-runoff-strainer

Even with the pictures. I cannot figure out where they go.
Pictures pulled back a little more context would help me with orientation.

 

[DannyUncanny]

Even with the pictures I cannot figure out where they go.

Just in front of the hood hinges, on either side of the firewall, where the fenders meet the engine bay.

 

[grumpyunk]

The leaves that congregate at the lower end of the front fenders will really turn to mud over time. They will hold water(and salt if available) and likely end up causing corrosion of the lower fender. That was a very common problem in areas with cars and trucks in the past.
The second problem would be the forward side of the rear wheel opening where a shelf is formed by the sheet metal. It will hold a load of snow and salt, and do the same thing. There are printable solutions for this available at the same site as the front 'basketwork'.
I plan on doing some printing. I already noted the path leaves take when they decide to slide out from the base of the windshield. I have used a leaf blower to attempt to evict them, not with perfect success. These printable accessories appear to be a very useful design.
tom

 

[HeyBales]

My 2024 under-fender covers, just behind my Mabett mud flaps - has a soft rubber flap that opens up for stuff to come out.
Obviously light fluffy leaves won't come down - but once wet I'm sure they will.
I saw some leaves sticking out the other night, and opened it and a few leaves came out and stems wedged I had to pull on, other side I pulled flap down and just dust.

I'll try to get picture later - but that drain area isn't sealed, seems intended to release stuff.
I'm sure the route from the upper to the bottom isn't gutter smooth either since it's probably the hairy cover back, and if that sound foam tilted over as I've seen before - even worse.

ETA:
Not a rubber flap like it's intentionally made for that purpose.
Hairy cardboard from liner that happens to be wimpy down there and can allow some stuff to escape - if heavy enough. Trapping several things in that whole area though. Not hard to see a backup or dam happening.

 

[gjallen3]

My 2024 under-fender covers, just behind my Mabett mud flaps - has a soft rubber flap that opens up for stuff to come out.
Obviously light fluffy leaves won't come down - but once wet I'm sure they will.
I saw some leaves sticking out the other night, and opened it and a few leaves came out and stems wedged I had to pull on, other side I pulled flap down and just dust.

I'll try to get picture later - but that drain area isn't sealed, seems intended to release stuff.
I'm sure the route from the upper to the bottom isn't gutter smooth either since it's probably the hairy cover back, and if that sound foam tilted over as I've seen before - even worse.

ETA:
Not a rubber flap like it's intentionally made for that purpose.
Hairy cardboard from liner that happens to be wimpy down there and can allow some stuff to escape - if heavy enough. Trapping several things in that whole area though. Not hard to see a backup or dam happening.

I don’t think these are really designed to be flaps to let debris escape. I think they are just poorly designed wheel well liners that are not attached very well underneath. Water yes, leaves not so much. I have 2024. A few months ago I opened up my wheel well liners in that area to install the fender insulation that was not installed in XLT’s. I was amazed at how much crap had accumulated there. And I live in leafless Phoenix with my garaged truck. That prompted me to buy the Mabett cowl screen which up until now is the only solution. If these baskets were available commercially I would have bought them. The Mabett solution only prevents debris caught in the cowl from passing through to the fenders and does nothing to catch leaves and debris that manage to make it over and past the cowl. I hope someone starts printing these baskets for sale.

 

[brickmagnet]

This is great!

What is the printed volume of these? A local shop says they'll charge $1/cc for black ABS, plus a nominal setup fee. Sounds like a deal compared to the half day of training and then scheduling time to print it at the library.

With fall here, it's a good time to check out your leaf collection points, right behind the lower hinges of your front doors. This is where much of the gunk that comes off your windshield ...

 

[DannyUncanny]

It’s 107 grams or 100 CCs of ABS

 

[MattTX]

This is great!

What is the printed volume of these? A local shop says they'll charge $1/cc for black ABS, plus a nominal setup fee. Sounds like a deal compared to the half day of training and then scheduling time to print it at the library.

TLDR: your local shop price seems high and I'd suggest checking a few other places.

I'm not new to 3d printing but have mostly done it as a hobby / for myself. I did a few small paid jobs a number of years ago and I just got a new, much better printer last week, so I've been researching what others charge since I'd like to sell prints as a side job. I also found some calculators that help figure out costs, since there are a lot of factors that go into it if you're wanting to make a profit. There's filament cost, labor costs, how long it takes the printer to make the print, failed print costs, post processing time (sanding, painting, gluing, etc), electricity costs, wear and tear on the printer, and shipping. Depending on the person / business there might also be other costs like insurance, rent, employee costs, etc.

So keep all that in mind when I say it seems like $1/cc is pretty high, that would make these baskets over $100! Perhaps they got to that number because they wrapped all of their expenses into one easy to understand rate, and made it high enough that it covers all the other variables (even though some of them would be much lower cost than others). That's not an uncommon way of pricing things but it does mean that you might not be getting the best value if what you're wanting to buy is on the lower end of the material / labor cost scale. I don't know their business model and there's a place for high price / high end services, sometimes it makes sense to go that route, but sometimes it doesn't. And I know one-off 3D printing will most always cost more than the same product being mass produced at a factory.

I just did a rough estimate using the Prusa3D calculator (https://blog.prusa3d.com/3d-printing-price-calculator_38905/) and based on the baskets using 107g of filament, going with what looks like an average cost for ABS filament ($22 per 1000kg roll), and roughly how much per hour I'd like to make for my labor (and roughly how long I'd expect to spend on it), I came out to about $25 to make both baskets at a profit. The majority of that is in my labor costs, the material cost is only about $3 and there's a few more dollars in other costs (electricity, wear and tear), so that's about an $18 - $20 profit. Not a huge profit but given the cost of materials (and that this isn't some highly technical / specialized / luxury / rare item) I think that's a decent amount. I actually ran the numbers through a second calculator and it also came up with similar results.

I've also seen a lot of people charging based on how long the print takes to make, ranging from $2 - $5 per print hour. I haven't sliced / printed these baskets so I don't know how long it would take on my printer (some printers are really fast, some really slow - and it also depends on the quality level you print at, as in some items you want to look really nice / smooth which takes longer, while other things can be a bit rough as long as it still does what it's meant to do) but OP Danny has the estimated print time at 6 hours, so that's between $12 and $30. Some people charge a setup fee on top of that which I've seen range from $10 - $30, so even adding that in it's quite a bit less than the $100+ your local shop charges.

 

[brickmagnet]

Shopping around costs too! Anything that would take me at least four hours of work to make myself, and saves me an hour every couple years in maintenance, is well worth a hundred bucks, and I like keeping my neighbors employed?

Selling this to one in five Maverick owners for a price no one can reject could make the OP a nice nest egg. Appears to have the background to do it.

TLDR: your local shop price seems high and I'd suggest checking a few other places... so even adding that in it's quite a bit less than the $100+ your local shop charges.

 

[MattTX]

Shopping around costs too! Anything that would take me at least four hours of work to make myself, and saves me an hour every couple years in maintenance, is well worth a hundred bucks, and I like keeping my neighbors employed?

Selling this to one in five Maverick owners for a price no one can reject could make the OP a nice nest egg. Appears to have the background to do it.

Supporting your neighbors / local businesses is always good and I did also have the thought that if you have the money and didn't want to spend the time checking other places, that's a legit reason for just going with them too. Like I said before, I'm not opposed to paying a premium when it makes sense, but for me I have way more free time than money so even when I do choose the more expensive option I will still spend the time making sure it's the right option (having OCD that makes me want to know as much as I can before making a decision also doesn't help!).

And I get what you're saying about the cost of spending the time to learn and make it yourself but I wasn't suggesting you go the training / library route for this, just that I don't think it should cost what it sounds like they are going to charge. Doing it yourself only makes sense if you're into 3D printing in the first place.

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