Low exhaust & ride hight!

[houghman]

Hi all, just took purchase of my beautiful S3 and she's got me hooked! However her exhaust is really low and I'm having problems with speed bumps (of which there's plenty where I live), she's scraping her belly every time and I'm concerned about damage, do I need to adjust the ride hight or is the protective casing good enough for her to take a few thwacks underneath?

[road2ruin]

Welcome to the wonderful world of TVR. Years of happy motoring as long as you avoid all spead bumps.

Sadly whilst you can ajust the ride height if you wish it wont make much difference you are still going to ground out driving over a pin. This is sadly a common traight with The S I think they just forgot about the exhaust until it was too late to make an adjustment. The best thing is to just avoid speed bumps of you can failing there there are a couple of common solutions. Fist is to put some 'U' bolts underneath to take the impact but I am not an advocate of this as it can cause more damage the it saves if you are unlucky. The second and far more sensible option is to look and see where it is grounding and regularly apply some cold weld to that spot and let that get ground down over a period of time and then re-apply it.

Good luck
Peter.

[the gazman]

houghman said:

Hi all, just took purchase of my beautiful S3 and she's got me hooked! However her exhaust is really low and I'm having problems with speed bumps (of which there's plenty where I live), she's scraping her belly every time and I'm concerned about damage, do I need to adjust the ride hight or is the protective casing good enough for her to take a few thwacks underneath?

It depends if you have any adjustment on the dampers and can you open the bonnet properly?
IMHO the measurement from main chassis member at the front to the ground should be ITRO of 175mm to stop grounding on the V6.
If not perhaps you should consider some ride height adjustable dampers, From AVO,Gaz,Protech,Nitron and Ohlins, the choice is endless depending on what you want to pay.

[jim20vt]

any way you can shorten the section of exhaust causing the problems?

[keirangrogan]

The springs will sag over time, mine used to ground out on flatish ground if you went over a slight bump at speed.

I fitted Adjustable AVO dampers and Springs (Can't remeber the poundage exactly might have been 300 rear 350 front), this solved the problem for all but the meanest of speed bumps !

[ceejay73]

Take a look underneath to see how much gap you have between the exhaust and the sump/chassis, this will tell you if you can get the exhaust any higher as that gap is usually the limiting factor. I had about 15mm between zorst and sump so I removed the downpipes and shortened them by half an inch where they go into manifolds. I also changed the standard U-bolts (which were the lowest point on mine)for for stainless slimline clamps from Car Builder Solutions. The end result when refitted was gap between zorst and sump reduced to around 5 or 6mm and lowest point around 15mm higher with new clamps. Granted this may not sound a great change but has made a big difference to the amount of grounding and no more wiped off exhaust clamps.
Hope thats of some help,
Carl.

[clarenceboddiger]

May be worth checking your engine mountings,I had the same problem with my S2,when I looked underneath I had A large gap above the exhaust,it turned out the offside engine mounting had softened causing the engine to sit very low,in fact the manifold resting on the chassis was the only thing stopping it getting lower.New engine mounts have helped but havent stopped the problem altogether.

[houghman]

Thanks for all your help guys....great advice!