Final ***embly ongoing on my 34 Ford five window. Have all fenders installed and tires mounted. What is a "safe" front fender to ground clearance for driving? Have a Heidts Superide front end with coil over shocks. Front tires are 205-60-15's but ground clearance is only about 3 inches at the fender tie under the grill! Only about 1-1/2 " more adjustment in the shocks and that is it! Looks cool as hell but I want to drive the paint off the car not s****e it off! Any opinions or advice? Thinking I might need longer shocks to gain more clearance. Waiting to hear from Heidts this week.
Most fresh road kill is more than three inches high. Scrub line is if the tire were to go flat, none of the suspension will drag the ground. Losing control. Body should be included really.
Presactly. That imaginary line is called the Scrub Line. No point of the car should be below the lowest point of the lowest wheel lip on the car. In many states, that's the law. The concept is, if you were to get two flats, on the same axle, no part of the body, suspension or ch***is would touch the ground. Some do run lower than this. It is not a good idea, and a solid risk. Metal touching the ground, at speed, can cause the ch***is to become unsettled, resulting in instantaneous, unrecoverable severe and catastrophic loss of control of the vehicle.
What gimpyshotrods said about scrub line. You can't steer metal skidding on the road. In practical terms, you need ground clearance equal or greater than your tyre sidewall height, i.e. 205 x 0.6 = 123mm, or a bit under 5". That is taken level with the front axle, and as if the underside of the car were flat, which it isn't. Easiest, sight forwards along the bottom of the running board (the rear, flattish bit): your sight-line should clip the bottom of the front rim, not p*** below into the sidewall.
5 inches is the bare minimum for me and works out good for most scrub line set-ups also. A beer can upright does the job for measurements.
I regularly see 4x4's that come off of flat bed trucks laying in lanes of traffic, they sure do major damage when hit at 70.., that and scrub line issues need to be watched for your safety and everyone else out there around you that is if your going to drive it..if its a trailer queen, than you have to be sure it will roll up on the trailer
In Ct my Off Topic daily driver is 3" static height. You have to be extremely careful in the North East when that low. In the colder months (winter), things move around a bit. A set of RR tracks I crossed frequently fooled me by heaving slightly. Cost me almost $3000 in front body repairs ( I did the labor) because of all the stuff the track tore off my car.
In theory, you should be able to let all 4 tyres go flat and nothing else on the car will be touching the ground. In reality, you should be able to drive over a chunk of wood, (4x4 as suggested) nor a housebrick (4x3) without ripping the sump plug, a brake or fuel line, or the edge of your body, out of the car. I'd suggest 5 inches is probably about right. Cheers, Glen.
Do not forget that springs "settle" over time. I guess your coil overs have some adjustment to them. Truth is, your car will be lower in 6 months than it is now if springs are new. You can be cool or you can be practical. Pick one.
Just got an e/m from Heidts and they said no additional height adjustment in the coil over is recomended and there are no longer shock set ups available. They can't determine from info I gave them if I have lowered spindles because set up was bought from one of their distributors not them directly? What the hell ..they don't know what they provided? Waiting for a return phone call but I have a bad feeling this isn't going to turn out well!
33-34's have that problem built in. It's low there. Drive it, fix it. That's the way it is on hot rods. If they were practical, they would look like Honda Civics. And Heidts is right, you can't just stick a longer shock in there. The geometry is built-in for the suspension to be at a predetermined height, usually with the lower arms level at ride height. That is payback for putting a MII front under it!
What's the fix? Repositioned crossmember? Taller coil-overs? Undropped uprights? Taller wheels/tires? Saw a car that was quite low in front...'40 Ford coupe I think...the owner had mounted a caster-wheel under there to protect his "chin". Imagine the scrub-line danger with that.
I think it would be right at the chin, everything else was "****ed up" into the car when I designed the front suspension. The car has a dropped axle (46" KP to KP, typical for a Deuce highboy) and split 40 Ford bones, (the wishbones were split the width of the tansmission mount), the frame was "C" notched where the bones came under the frame. It also has front and rear sway bars. The whole front suspension was set up without the spring in place and I did "sweeps" with it all ***embled to see if any of it would bind. I also sectioned the chin down to 1" in height, and tapered into the fenders to get it lower and raised the center of the front crossmember 1". Eric Vaughn modified the rear Halibrands for me as well. Sorry if it seems I'm hijacking the thread, but Mustang II's really don't work on these cars if you want to get them low. Good luck, hopefully you'll get it where you want it. Steve
A stout Nerf-Bar might work to deflect anything on the road from hitting your grill, then hope you don't blow a tire. Don't forget there is still tire on a flat rim, so "sitting on empty rims" is not a good measure, add a couple inches for the flat rubber.
I had a set of 2" lowered M2 spindles on a Super ride 2 Heidts done by one of their favored installation shops. They can know exactly what you have by small changes that they perform in their metal work and their spring packages. I had to put a stock height set of spindles on mine because the thing was too low. Something for you to consider. Many times a spring ratio that is too light is used on these units. You should check your compressive travel heights in your springs often. Most of the damage that can be done to these M2 units seems to stem from springs that are not up to task. Once the cushion is gone you really are riding them solid and your stuff gets broken real quick. I'm currently in a 3 years and swap the bushings and springs mindset just to be safe. Running low like this I upped my capacity on my springs as well. I mic my springs every 3 months to be safe.
Talked to Heidts and I was able to squeeze more clearance out of the shock set up. Ran it up to about 5-1/2 inches clearance from the tie to the ground. Feedback?
HHHHHMMMMMMM... Been driving my '48 at 3 1/4" clearance at it's lowest point for about 200,000 miles now. That's daily, and all over the country. You do have to pay attention to where you are and what you are doing. This is the most ground clearance I have ever had on a vehicle, I might add.
Yes, saddle time will make a big difference in 'how low' is too l-o-w. I have 3" on a good day. Dodging and weaving the land mines of the asphalt.
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