So another issue with my wife's xB aside from the steering vibration has to do with the drop. It has DF210's on it so the drop is pretty low. This wasn't an issue for a while until she got a new job in the city and had to deal with the crappy parking lot there. The only exit to the lot is in a postion where there's a steep/short drop to the street. It's narrow so she doesn't have enough room to go over it at an angle or anything to limit the scraping. I've tried it myself and no matter how slow and careful, it scratches everytime.

Here's the result...




I've posted a thread in the general xB board about finding some kind of protective splitter or whatever, but I wanted to post here asking about options for the current suspension.

We both love the look of the lower ride and would hate to swap the springs out for the originals. That pic looks bad, but most of the time you don't really notice the scraping, and anyone would only really notice if they got down and looked for it. But it's there and it will most likely only continue to get worse. Even if you don't notice it, I hate to see the body get marked up. I don't want to have keep replacing/touching up the front end, so I wanted to know about some possible options.

I'm kinda a newb with these mechanics, but would could I look into regarding things like adding some kind of adjustable shocks or whatever. Air ride or something? Something that won't cost an arm and a leg, but might allow her to adjust the ride height on the fly. In other words, something that would work with the current setup, and she could raise the ride when leaving her parking lot and drop it back down the rest of the time.

Hope this makes sense and thanks in advance for the help.

 

get bigger rims heh. 17's or18's maybe..?

 

Well the only suggestion I could think of would be change springs to a set not as low or go for the air. Maybe TRD cause airride is the only change on the fly system. Any type of splitter will only make things worse,hanging that much lower on a car already scraping. I had a front splitter on my car and I am running the same springs and any scraping put pressure on the whole bumper cover and the bumper covers do not have lots of support at the bottom. So in my opinion you kinda stuck with how much money you want to spend to help with the issue

 

Different rims done correctly will not change the clearance. For correct vehicle function when you go to a larger rim the overall diameter of the wheel and tire combination does not change. You have only a larger rim in a shorter tire, resulting in the same overall diameter and therefore the same ride height.

You could go with a slightly larger diameter tire, an inch larger diameter will raise the car .5 but will result in speedometer inaccuracy of between 1 and 2% low and of course any mileage calculationd you do will be low by the same amount. With a 2" drop there might not be quite enough clearance to go 1" larger.

Shockwave did you see the link I posted on your other post. Something like these:
https://www.scionlife.com/parts/imag...f1complete.jpg would be pretty easy to fabricate and not very expensive material wise. Looks like 3/16-1/4 inch aluminum sheet cut to fit across the area and screwed to the bottom of the lip. A clean look and easy to do. You and some measuring and a jigsaw, some sand paper, and a drill could likely make something similar.

 

What about getting some kind of anti-slip sort of tread they use on stairs and stuff. That stuff is pretty gritty and seems durable.

I got the idea when I was at a Lotus dealer today and took a look at an Elise. Under the front lip of the bumper it had what looked just like this stuff all along the bottom edge. It looked like it was just some kind of application that would be stuck on like any type of vinyl, but it was designed to protect the edge from scraping...

Here's what I'm talking about as far as the type of tread material...



Just imagine that wrapped around the lip of the bumper....

Make sense?

 

that would eventually rub though. also, how would you attach it w/o it comming off when you scrape?

 

Ya, I realize it would eventually rub thru, but it could at least limit/restrict the damage to the car/paint itself. Just a thought.

Chances are I'll probably jsut leave it as it is and if it ever gets so marked up that I notice it without having to lay down and look under the bumper, I'll just replace the bumper and get higher springs...

 

I really wouldn't worry about scraping under the lip. I'd clean up the edge you can see with a little sand paper, and let it be. I wouldn't run the floor traction stuff, it'll likely look just as bad as the scrape.

As for keeping it from happening in the future. You could raise the suspension, or try a higher profile tire.

Or my personal favorite.....buy about 10 bags of gravel and sneak into the lot at night and dump them in the gutter. That way it evens out the transition some.

 

I'd try to fab up brackets to mount some of those pucks that sport bikes use for when the slide the bike on their sides. Then adjust them to hit before the parts you don't want to. Or teach her to take obstacles that cause this sort of damage at an angle so as to not scrape or just avoid going to places like that altogether.

 

 

oh there's always a way to get a lil angle out of it. she could buy a plywood board and use that every time. lol.

or park in a different lot.


or not worry about it.

 

I had that problem till I put 45's on my 17 inch rims, Lifts about
a 1/4 inch back up.

 

With such a mild drop and that much scraping I'd just avoid the area or add airbags to lift it over the obstacle. After the first time you should have added a steel plate to under the lip. Eventually it will run out of material to scrape off.

 

adding a oversized tire could fix the problem but yuckizaki.

 

It's painfull seeing the damage to that RS3.0 lipage.

 

If that little bit of a scrape is painful, you definitely do not want to see mine....I pulled into my grandmas driveway of doom (huge dip at the end) unknowing and all but ripped the damn lip off.

My s10 was so low that if you slammed on the brakes hard enough the lip would drag the asphalt

 

^^^OUCH^^^^