Ride height is too low
Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 10:56 am
Without going into a longwinded story has anyone any ideas on this?
A few months ago I "crunched" the front wheelarch lip when turning into my drive (at a walking pace incidentally). The tyre had obviously contacted the return lip on the arch producing a 3 inch long crack.
I've owned this car 37 plus years and this is the first time this has happened.
Assuming the obvious to be the cause I changed the front springs for the std 85lb units (to replace the 20 year old std 85lb ones on the car). Result- no difference in the ride height or clearance.
Some info about the car-
Std fhc sprint- no body mods.
Std suspension
Std size tyres - 155/80/13
Original engine so no weight changes
To be honest I've never really paid any attention to the wheelarch clearance before although thinking back I seem to recall casually thinking that the car seemed to low ride but unfortunately I've no old pictures showing the clearance back then for comparison.
I did notice when I bought the car in 1978 that there were cracks in both front arches but put this down to carelessness by the first owner when removing the wheels but maybe he'd had a similar problem.
The body sits correctly on the chassis so I've ruled that out (the chassis is not recent so can be discounted and it's properly bolted on).
Any ideas- the only thing I can think of is a mis-shapen body but looking at other sprints I can't see any noticeable differences.
I've attached a picture I took today for illustration- I reckon the lip should be around an inch higher.