Bullet nose knows what I'am talking about. Air bags are for sissy there I said it. And a good thing to do when you lower your car is to let the air out of the tires to check what will hit when you get a flat.But if you keep good tires on it that souldn't happen unless you hit something in the road.
[ QUOTE ] The fact is: REAL LOWERED CARS DON'T HAVE AIR BAGS OR HYDRAULICS! There's nothing like the feeling of your *** hole puckering up as you approach a bump in the road at 65 MPH. [/ QUOTE ] Tell that to Ron Aguirre and his bubbletop '57 Vette X-Sonic. He was the very first to put hydros on anything.And if I'm not mistaken Watson painted that car.........
all i can say is "catastrophic failure"...if you have one with a bagged or juiced car, can you get home? driving a low car is like riding a bike, keep your eyes open and make sure you have room to move away from potholes and road debris. like the time i was going to work one morning in my 67 catalina (very low, non adjustable ride height), some douche is riding my *** for a couple of miles. it didn't matter if i sped up, slowed down, changed lanes, whatever, he was fascinated with being right up my bumper. i finally got sick of it and pulled onto the shoulder, but didn't see the muffler and part of a tailpipe that quickly got caught up under the car. fortunately, i was able to dislodge it by stopping and backing up. pissed me off, though, and was anxious the rest of the day, 'til was able to go home and make sure there wasn't any damage. mf
"bags are for groceries" I didn't think my car was THAT low...but driving home last night, the windows were down (1 AM). At a light there was this guy and his kid in their car. They roll down the window, and the kid shouts to me "do you have hydraulics?!?" haha..."nope!" I'm ******** *****... But as has been said...drive it low and know where you're at. Memorize the bumps and holes, know the speedbumps and know which parts of the bumps are lower. My parking lot has bumps all over. Ayntime I hit em at more than 2 mph, the front crossmember hits. I usually bring it to a near stop going over, but sometimes I'm in a hurry.
[ QUOTE ] Two words-Air Bags. [/ QUOTE ] three words- **** air bags I don't want to get onto the war of the lowering tech. but if you are driving a car on the ground you adapt very quick, its a oneness with your car. kind of like the 3 pedal arguement. nothing wrong with bags or automatic transmissions (for posers) but if you really want to know the pleasure of a custom or hot rod you need to live with it every minute that you drive. If you want to look cool in your flamed folding chair with the drink holders and pockets and the local cruise in bags mustang ll 350/350 and you're one of the boys (or girls) one tip (if you don't bag it) lake pipes (straight no mufflers) are cheap insurance to save your rusty rocker panels. they help you slide over speed bumps with very neat sounds and little damage
You guys are some hard core mother****ers huh. My mulletstang is dropped about 2-3 inches, and i'm sick of watching the roads for dips and drops. It's not fun, it's a pain in the ***. I drag headers, I rub tires whenever I turn, and one of my rear tires looks like it's been hit with a cheese grader. Car look good low, but not that damned good. I'd rather be able to keep up with traffic than listen for the headers touching down. FWIW, here in the desert they're too cheap to invest in drainpipes. So, instead, there's drainage ditches running across the roads, at every intersection. Even some across the lanes. When I lived back east, I thought CA was the land of the perfect road... boy, was I wrong..
well I have bags but no valves or switches...I guess I am half ******** then? I drag **** all the time. just come up to speed bumps slow and take your time. go measure the speed bumps in your neighborhood and build your car a hair higher than that. if you are talking about monster potholes that eat cars then I don't know what to say. a hole 4" deep wont kill your *** but a 12" monster hole will.....just use common sense
how do you guys lower them? cut springs or drop spindles and so on. i want mine lowerded and will still probly use hydros but just curious.
[ QUOTE ] all i can say is "catastrophic failure"...if you have one with a bagged or juiced car, can you get home? hydros are pretty easy to fix in order to get home, now bags a whole different story.
thanks for all the advice guys! I'm not planning on lowering it a great deal, maybe 2" or whatever 1 coil gets me, but I live in Chicago, the city, not the suburbs, and even the smoothest streets here are chock full of road hazards. I cant afford air bags, hell, I cant afford air shocks! I just want for the car to stop in the intersection of cool and practical. I may eventually replace cut coils with lowered springs, but it will be awhile before that dough surfaces.
http://i1037.photobucket.com/albums/a460/riverside63/DSC_0719.jpg http://i1037.photobucket.com/albums/a460/riverside63/DSC_0720.jpg Not an American Hot rod, but rolled it an 1 1/2in off the ground non bagged. Save the cash and bag it! (**** this is old, disregard) Newb here.
I have bags on my Newport, but I hardly even air them up anymore unless I have to. I just smack **** all the time. If something breaks, I'll fix it. The roads here in Portland are terrible-I bet yours are no better. It's just part of driving a low car. I used to be super careful-to not scratch up my precious baby--Now I just say **** it, it's too much work to have to worry about every dip in the road. Meanwhile, I do have some good battle scars in a few key areas of my undercarriage, and my $90 exhaust tips are both flat on the bottom, but what are ya gonna do?
Anybody who would s****e and damage the underside of their car because some nobody online said "hurr bags are for ***s" is a ****ing idiot.
Overhere in Belgium we probebly have the worst roads in Europe. I'll be bagging my '51 Packard for sure.
A while back here on the HAMB a guy told us he was driving his leadsled into a service station dragging the front and rear through the dip in the driveway.A guy came rushing out with a floor jack saying that is too bad your tires went flat,I will jack it up and get er fixed for ya. LOL. All the exits in my neighborhood now have HUGE speed bumps that I have to carefully menuver over.They call them SPEED CONTROL,YEA I agree. Like a farmer in Kansas told me,your car is wayyy too low,it would be worthless driving here on our country roads.I told him I agree with him, thats why I don't live there.LOL. He did say ( but ) she sure is purdy.he was being nice.
You will just neeed to know what to look for in terms of driveway angles, size of speed bumps, etc. The fact is; there are some places I just dont go because the car wont make it in. My son's HS is one of them, I have to drop him off out on the street because the car won't make it in the driveway. I have s****ed most of the paint off of the rear skirts (more than once) and still miss judge sometimes. It aint easy looking good.
I run one car pretty low. My exhaust was flat in a few spots and getting a jack under the rear or front required parking on 3" planks. I raised the front back up by 1" and the same in the rear. I also run air shocks in the rear. I only run 40lbs in them but I can add air when loaded or if I need to jack the rear up.
Back in our area, East Coast and many, many years ago, a pack of cigarettes standing upright under the rocker or Lake Pipe was the standard height to shoot for or if you were more adventurous it was the pack laying on it's side. Anyone else ever hear of this ?
Well, Indy doesn't really compare to Chi-town, but my car does okay. Yeah, there are places where I can't go (mostly due to sneaker plugs and the off chance of catching one and trashing an exhaust manifold), and steep drives are a beezy (as well as big curbs and big speed bumps), but as everyone has said, its just the dilemma of having a static-dropped car. My car is a bit shorter than yours though, so you may run into problems. FWIW, my car has 4 inch blocks, old springs, and I think a whole loop or 1.5 loops off the front, with A-arm spacers to drop the spring pocket an inch. Essentially its around a 4 inch drop in the front, and around a 5 inch drop in the back, I'd say.
I love that bags are either not ******** enough to be cool because you don't have to s****e over everything, or they're too ******** because you might be stranded when you have a catastrophic failure. we all drive 50+ year old cars, who cares about being stranded somewhere, this isn't anything new. Get AAA. Personally, I have a lot more respect for the dude that fabricates a complicated bag system with 4-links and bridges and the whole nine than some dude that chops a few coils and calls it a day. As for not being ******** enough, I drive a super low car daily (not my Ford), I've busted trans pans, oil pans, chopped the hell out of the sidewall of tires, all the cool ******** stuff. **** that, I want to have my cake and eat it too. IMO, it's "cool" to have a car that looks good and yet can still get into any driveway or over any speedbump I point it at.
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