Sunday 3 March 2013

E21 316: Spring Chop Chronicles 3 - Double Drop!

I was so keen to test out the o/s/r wheel-arch I rolled in last week that I left the locking wheel-nut key on the wheel and sped off. This is the one bit of kit you don't want to lose, as I couldn't get the wheels off to paint, chop, or even roll the n/s/r arch off the tyre [which has been smoking and squeaking all week] until my replacement key came on Friday. Needless to say it's been a busy weekend...


I started by taking 2 coils out of the uncut n/s front spring to compare it to the o/s with a single coil removed and it wasn't a lot lower and not sitting on the tyre thankfully, so I chopped the o/s down to match it. With 2 coils taken from each of the front springs that's slightly over 2kg off the chassis, which should in part make up for my heavy steel spacers.


Above shows the original height of the SPAX spring, a drop of 40mm from stock.


Now with a single coil removed, above, the car sits at about -55mm from stock, give or take. That's low! But not low enough...


2 coils removed and she's as low as she'll go on the normal-length strut inserts, but there's still just about enough clearance to get one finger into the arch. Don't seem to be getting any scrubbage off the tyres, which is good considering 


Now we're really scraping...


...but so is the sump! 2 inches ground clearance for this engine then - speed-bumped roads are out of the question! Let's hope someone doesn't leave a brick lying in the street!

No comments:

Post a Comment