I went out last night to meet up with my wife and to have a couple of drinks and enjoy a band. Well, when we were leaving, I was exiting a parking lot towards what I thought was an exit but quickly learned it was a curb. I heard a bang and rode up on it. I was thinking that was the end of the spoiler kit but much to my surprise, I managed to cause no damage at all to the spoiler and the bang was the skid plate underneath.

I spent about 30 minutes inspecting the car once I got home and not only is the spoiler completely intact and not even scratched, skid plate isn't even scratched either. Don't ask me how.

It's for things like this that I don't understand we many of you lower your cars. It's too low as it is!

 

I agree with you there. Lowered Fits sure look cool, but I suspect that most of the guys who lower them live in areas where they don't have to deal with potholes and frost heaving. When the ground started to thaw this spring, there was a week or so I couldn't even back out of my driveway without grounding the car.

Don't get me started on how bad the roads are over here in NY.

 

I'm with you 100%. I think lowered Fits look awesome but can't be practical. At least not up here. And I'd be willing to bet that the roads in MA are worse than in NY! Hell, I've seen construction crews building pot holes!

But here's an honest story. There's one particular road that is ridden with potholes and the DPW's idea of fixing it is putting barrels in them. So you have cars veering into the oncoming lanes, etc just to miss the barrels. One night, a call came in to the police dept saying how there was 6 cars on the side of the road with flat tires, so the cop speeds out there to direct traffic and guess what happened?

You guessed it! He got a flat too!

 

How many drinks did ya have?



Glad there was no damage. I'm in NY too. I could NEVER lower this car here. Not into that anyway. There are two driveways in my life I have to angle in and out of to avoid scraping. Thankfully, it isn't my driveway. Potholes here at the moment have me sloloming like a down hill skier. You hit a some bads ones at night and hope for the best. I swear they fix them just enough to keep people working to re-fix them. They NEVER stop working on the LIE out here. It's just one long fix after another, year after year. They don't make anything like they used to- especially roads. And if you ask me, it's on purpose.

Dan

 

NY's got this one. Drive Rt 88 from Binghamton to Albany. This is not a road like around boston or anywhere near an "urban" area and it is AWFUL. Have to drive it to go see the inlaws and there are literally, cracks that are 4"-5" WIDE and over 100' long that run with you down the road (not across it). it looks like the cement has cracked and is ready to slide down the hill next to you (actually 2 years ago, it did... and killed some people). I don't think any of the concrete under your wheels has any re-bar for reinforcement so when it cracks, you'll get a piece of cement just sitting in the middle of the road.

I did the same thing as you did with the "exit" out of a gas station a number of years back in my prelude. there was no warning that there was a curb there and it blended in with the road. KaCHUNK! In my case, it was the suspension hitting the bumpstops. No damage luckily. I feel your pain.

~SB

 

Welcome to the club of your Fit kissing pavement!

Cat :x

 

I haven't really had trouble bottoming out my lowered Fit. However, the paint on the front end of my poor car is TRASHED. I have paint chips all the way uip the A pillars, even on the leading edge of the roof! And I'm really not that low, I don't see how some of these guys running coilovers do it....

 

I washed my car today and finding the latest accumulation of dings and scratches I don't want to see is one of the reasons I don't wash it more often... I am lowered very slightly on Swift Mach springs and I wouldn't think of going lower and It actually bottomed out more when totally stock than it does now.... I think it is because I have scraped off so much of the plastic crap on the bottom of the car.

 

My car is 2 inches lower and I plan on goin lower I live in nj .. full of potholes and dips .. there are actually slammed fits on this forum that will tell u even in there area the roads are bad .. just avoid potholes and know where curbs are .. slow over speed bumps and angle ur way into inclines.. there is a way to drive lowerd cars, gotta learn if u wanna go low

 

I know that crack I think. It's on I88 eastbound between Unadilla and Oneonta, right? That's what happens when you lay a concrete road over a swamp. If not, it's the one on the east side of Belden Hill. I drive both sections every week. Some fun, eh?

I-88 was built between 1975 and 1978 and the concrete pavement has reached the end of its useful life. Of course, there is no money to pay to fix the road now.

 

I only had 2 drinks. Really. But what I did do was return there again tonight for dinner with my wife and I was able to see how I screwed up.

There actually WAS a parking lot entrance/exit but apparently they built a curb after the fact. I guess it was to prevent people from cutting through the parking lot? So what I must have done was look too far ahead (seeing the exit) and over-looking what was right in front of me (the curb).

 

Mugen kit + stock ride height = scrapes on everything. The Mugen lip sticks out both sideways and out front. Scraped the side pulling into a gas station with a steep approach angle. I also bottomed out the bumper pulling down and out of a coffee shop. No visable damage, but even with my lowered Civics I've never had as big of an issue with scraping. Honestly considering taking off the Mugen lip and getting a lower profile spoiler once I go lower.

 

My wife seems to have no concept of where any car's limits are, and the spoiler (paint, not the rub strip on the bottom) is scarred where she pulled into a curb. Two weeks ago, she gauged the right side trim below the doors -- all the way from behind the front wheel to in front of the rear wheel. When I asked her when she had scraped along a curb (I knew it had been within the past hour), she looked at me, and said, "What?" I pointed to the car. Unfortunately, I broke my foot on March 19, and probably won't be able to drive again until June, so I anticipate further damage to the car.

 

I have seen that and it's horrible from the inside and even worse from the outside because there, you have people seriously baring down on you while you stop for a non existing entrance. Couple that with poor lighting and you have the makings for problems. Years ago I pulled into a place and bottomed out. Didn't think much of it. From there I went to the beach- about 20 miles away. All of a sudden my oil light came on, and then blinked like mad. You guessed it- snapped my oil res nut clean off and out came all the oil. That was just not a good day at all.

Dan