Bloody Ground Clearance!!!

[wanacoop]

I spent Wednesday & Thursday night clearing out the garage to get the S3 in, finally finished and as the garage is in a block there is a little, bit of road leading down to them...

As i went to drive the Tiv over the kerb and down the slope to garages it made a very loud scrape sound!! I kept going as i was halfway over..

Got the beast in the garage and spent all last night in a sulk not knowing what to do about it

all the bleddy articles i read on the S, and i managed to miss this problem.

(I hope the 'S' doesn't stand for 'Sulk' instead of 'Smug!')

[Barkychoc]

See if it does it when you take it out again - if not reverse it down the ramp when you put it in the garage.

If it does scrape again a strategically placed plank when you want to take it down the ramp might just give you enough clearance, so the wheels go over the plank and are lifted up a bit just before it scrapes. The hard bit is to stop the plank moving, this can be done with a bit of carpet wrapped round it, I'll never expain it in words I'll do a top quality drawing and post it

[Gerald-TVR]

Hi Tony

Identical problem with my drive but I have found that if I approach at 45 degrees i can just avoid a scrape on the apex of the drive. See cp diagram


Do you think I could make a living as an artist??????????????

[Barkychoc]

I can beat that!

You can do this to get a bit more clearance - the carpet stops the wood sliding away.

[wanacoop]

Cracking picture's!!

But you're onto a good idea with a ramp, i was going to build one today after work, but got a nasty late minute job!! So didn't have time

[Dave_M]

Ground clearance is a pain, but you quickly get used to it!

[clarenceboddiger]

Have a look underneath whilst the scrape is fresh, it may be the exhaust clamps that are catching and you may be able to rotate them a bit to stop the problem.I had this problem at the top of my driveway when I first got my s2, changed clamps and never had it since.

[Ragtop]

Hi Tony,

My car came with ridiculously low clearance between the exhaust system and ground. There are lots of 'speed bumps' to negotiate round here, so something had to be done.

The first thing was to replace the standard exhaust clamps with the stainless steel flat band type - that's an extra 5mm straight away!

Research on this forum revealed a lot of opinions on ride height, and I decided to go for 175mm front 185mm rear, measured from ground to the underside of the main longitudinal chassis rails, adjacent to the towing loop at the front and the rear outrigger tube at the back. On my car the ride height is easily adjusted with a C-spanner on the damper spring collar, and I can do all four corners with the car standing on its wheels as normal. I also made a simple lever height gauge to make the measurements easy. I should have loosened all the suspension bushes first, but I didn't - this meant leaving the car standing for a day or two between adjustments to let it settle.

It seems to handle okay and I haven't had any ground clearance issues since. However, I noticed last Sunday that my car was running higher than most:



In the long term, it may be worthwhile checking and (if possible) raising your ride height a little.

(I love these cars - there's just SO much to fiddle with...)

Regards,
Graham

[greymrj]

Interesting Graham, I'm new to mine and I still need to 'play' with ride height which I can do as I have the SPAX adjustables. You mentioned the band clamps, I have never used them and did wonder about them as the U clamp nuts are currently the lowest point and would tend to catch rather than slide on an obstruction. Are they good and where did you get them?
I should however say that we S owners dont know how well off we are...many years ago I had a Mk1 Grantura, measured (2 up) at 1.5" ground clearance! Every trip was an adventure!

[TJC46]

cannot recommend these clips highly enough. As well as better ground clearance they can be removed easily and reused time and again. Web address is WWW.SUPERCLIPS.CO.UK.

[Gerald-TVR]

Agree with Tom these clips are first class

[Ragtop]

greymrj said:

Interesting Graham, I'm new to mine and I still need to 'play' with ride height which I can do as I have the SPAX adjustables. You mentioned the band clamps, I have never used them and did wonder about them as the U clamp nuts are currently the lowest point and would tend to catch rather than slide on an obstruction. Are they good and where did you get them?
I should however say that we S owners dont know how well off we are...many years ago I had a Mk1 Grantura, measured (2 up) at 1.5" ground clearance! Every trip was an adventure!

Crikey! That's the sort of adventure I can live without!!

I got Mikalor clamps - seem to be good and quite widely available.

G

[wanacoop]

well, made up a really quick, naff ramps today, and placed them either side of the kerb, with some slow driving, and the girlfriend moving the ramps so i hit them, i managed to to clear the raised kerb without a scrape!!!

So now it's just all the other speed bumps and high kerbs to worry about...

[Gentleman Geoff]

wanacoop said:

So now it's just all the other speed bumps and high kerbs to worry about...

You get used to it. Just remember that the underneath of an S looks a bit like a scalextric car... you need to try to straddle anything that is liable to catch the exhaust.

[greymrj]

Thanks guys, been on the Superclips page, the ones they supply are the Mikalor ones that ragtop recommended so I am going to get some for mine.

[spivvy]

when i first got my car i checked the garage etc got it home and couldn't get over the slope on the driveway we had to lift it over .
even with ramps it still didn't go over,

so we had to raise the drive by doubling up slabs and also cutting a little bit of the pavement out to allow the exhaust over
goes in everytime now

[Barkychoc]

An alternative to a ramp would be a long plank - drive with one wheel runing along the plank to give a bit more clearance.

[catretriever]

As others have said.....a bit of creative manoevering usually avoids the problem