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Nose too long, car too low!!!

TURBO2GO

TURBO2GO

Illustrious Member
Joined
8 March 2006
Messages
16,594
Location
Boston
I am wondering how some of you guys do it. I am now an expert at driving on and off ramps and driveways sideways... and drive a car with stock ride height, and still managed to destroy my second cantrell lip. In fact... I think I have done more than that. Trying to navigate over some railroad tracks I got caught... the lip pushed up the bumper, the bumper pressed on the fender, I now have a small dent in my fender!!! Is this even possible? I don't know how else it could have happened.

I have this $10k suspension I want to put in, and I don't how on earth my car can survive a drop.

I have looked for various lips made of urethane, and all I have found is the JP Aero, not in love with its looks and I am still not sure it is a help.

I don't like the stock lip AT ALL, and I am still not sure it would solve my problem.

I have thought about Ravi's lift system for a while, but it is expensive, takes up space, and adds weight I have worked SO HARD to remove. Plus, I am not sure it's enough lift. I mean to spend 3K and still not get clearance would suck. It is only 3" max, lets say I drop 2", that give me 1" over what I have now. Is that enough? I doubt it.

This is one of the most frustrating things about my NSX. How does everyone else cope?
 
I'll post pics of my dented fender so you guys can tell me what the F happened here... has anyone else dented their fender?
 
The lip is attached to the lower bumper, the lower bumper attaches to the upper bumper which has attachment points to the fenders. I am thinking that when the lip caught something, it transferred through the bumper to the fender and effectively "stressed" or "buckled the fender temporarily. Since the lower and upper bumper covers are plastic, they went back to their original shape. The aluminum fender of course would retain the "stressed" shape that it had been subjected to.
 
well maybe you should raise your car up a little.

having a cool looking car vs a car that cant go over a railroad track ( someone could slam into the back of you ) and the monthly front end repairs

my NSX was lowered I had to drive slow over things, hated it, raised the car to stock height now.....Now I never slow down. I fly over speed bumps
at 70-80 mph without even touching my brakes.

I hated swerving around manhole covers, and bumps in the road. at times roads are so bad It looked like I had to much to drink, could mistake me for a drunk driver. LOL
 
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I've got the shine lip and type r susp and sh#t happens.....just have to be careful .....most railroad tracks I have been over give me no problems....because I see them and slowwwwwwww down.:confused:
 
This is the reason why I haven’t driven my car around much. I only go where there are no steep driveways. I know which gas stations to use and not to use. Going up a slightly steep driveway is not bad as going down a steep driveway. No matter how much I angle the car, it still scrubs. I don’t want to damage the fender or rip off the bumper one day. It’s a pain and I hate that. I want to go wherever I want to go, therefore I am purchasing the lift system from Ravi. Sure it’s expensive but it will buy peace of mind, and that is worth for than the $3100 for the system itself. It’s not a track car, so the weight increase doesn’t bother me.
 
Read the second sentence Shawn.

All of my cars have been lowered, so it just becomes a habit when driving over rr tracks, dips, etc.
 
I hope someone with Ravi's VRH can chime in, what happens when you are 2" lower than stock already? Seems like you'd really need a bit more than 3" lift to be safe.

I really don't know how guys that are lowered do it...
 
One thing that I do to prevent damage to fiberglass and carbon lips is to fill the inside with fiberglass filler, this stops them from getting cracked/smashed.

Secondly, you can most likely get paintless dent removal to take care of the dent.

I have found that keeping a small piece of slash cut 2x4 in the trunk is very handy - and a lot cheaper than repairing damage (sure you look like a tool)
 
angus said:
Secondly, you can most likely get paintless dent removal to take care of the dent.
Click to expand...

It cracked the paint... I cannot believe this kind of pressure came from the lip dragging... This is probably $1000 worth of damage if not more.
 
I hear ya man! I love the stance of my car but sometimes its just not worth it. I recently have been looking for somebody to roll my fenders. I went to the shop to make sure I could find it and had to go up a crazy incline to get into the place. Now the one side of my lip is all scratched up. What I have learned driving a lowered car is you really have to pick your spots. There are roads in my area I wont go down no matter what. Then you got times stuff happens and there isnt anything you can do.
 
I've hit a V shaped parking ramp. What kind of stupid place allows the floor to go up at the bottom of a steep ramp. No obvious damage but the nose did bottom out.
 
I'm with ANGUS on this one. I keep 2, three foot pieces of 2X6 wood in the trunk. Sometimes people have to wait but if it comes down to them waiting for a couple of minutes or my front getting creamed - they wait.

Slowing to a stop and eliminating as much bounce as possible helps.

Whatcha gonna do?
 
After destroying 2 front lips and having to repaint it every 3 months in the SupraTT I had, there was no way I wanted to deal with the same problem in my nsx. Therefore I ended up going with the JP Aero Vizage lip you mentioned since it's flexible and most importantly, you don't have to paint it.

I am extremely careful about handling driveways at 45degree angles, but you can never entirely avoid the unknown bump that can crack all the paint on a painted front lip. So far it's held up very good.

Only problem with the JP lip is that it took 4-5 months to get, so you'll want to order a couple just in case you break one. (my nsx is on the Bilstein lower perch)
 
One of the reasons I sold my RGT replica as it accentuated this even more. one thing that helped was an aluminium undertray I built for it as it acted as a "skid plate" and avoided what just happened to your car.
 
TURBO2GO said:
I am wondering how some of you guys do it. I am now an expert at driving on and off ramps and driveways sideways... and drive a car with stock ride height, and still managed to destroy my second cantrell lip. In fact... I think I have done more than that. Trying to navigate over some railroad tracks I got caught... the lip pushed up the bumper, the bumper pressed on the fender, I now have a small dent in my fender!!! Is this even possible? I don't know how else it could have happened.

I have this $10k suspension I want to put in, and I don't how on earth my car can survive a drop.

I have looked for various lips made of urethane, and all I have found is the JP Aero, not in love with its looks and I am still not sure it is a help.

I don't like the stock lip AT ALL, and I am still not sure it would solve my problem.

I have thought about Ravi's lift system for a while, but it is expensive, takes up space, and adds weight I have worked SO HARD to remove. Plus, I am not sure it's enough lift. I mean to spend 3K and still not get clearance would suck. It is only 3" max, lets say I drop 2", that give me 1" over what I have now. Is that enough? I doubt it.

This is one of the most frustrating things about my NSX. How does everyone else cope?
Click to expand...

The Cantrell lip is fiberglass no? I would assume this is more susceptible to getting damaged because it doesn't have much flex as the OEM? If you don't like how the OEM looks, maybe paint it glossy black for a more "finished" look. But even before I had the UAD system, I just perfected angling, driving slow over bumps, etc. Still do... even with the system!


TURBO2GO said:
I hope someone with Ravi's VRH can chime in, what happens when you are 2" lower than stock already? Seems like you'd really need a bit more than 3" lift to be safe.

I really don't know how guys that are lowered do it...
Click to expand...

Have you seen my demo video on the UAD site? Trust me, the clearance you get doesn't sound big, but it's HUGE!
 
two words, "go slower", hell my NSX on stock height is like an suv compared to my dropped GT, and while I do scrape on occasion, not often. Angle and speed are your friends!!!
 
change your approach angle, come in wide...

Treacherous Ascent/descent angles can be negotiated by how you approach them. Proceed from a lateral angle (ie. side-to-side) coming in as wide as you can from either flank. Vehicles w/ the mother-of-all-slammed ride-heights w/ perhaps at most an inch to two inch front-end ground clearance avoid scraping by doing such.
996garage said:
I ended up going with the JP Aero Vizage lip you mentioned since it's flexible and most importantly, you don't have to paint it...
Click to expand...
That's a nice lip, one that I would surely go w/ if it was available for '91-'01 NSX models! I have the Comptech (widebody) front-bumper lip which was trimmed & mounted (using rivets/fasteners) on my previous NSX. I'd like to re-install it on my current NSX, though I don't want to use any hardware but rather 3M VHB mounting-tape and/or windshield mounting-adhesive. I'm not even sure if all that would be enough. . .
 
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People with stock ride height / stock suspension that slow down for RR tracks? :confused:

I've not...and I'm on the original front lip with 56k miles. I mostly have to be careful about driveways with steep entrances (already going slow, so just enter at angle). Harsh speed bumps I'll slow for (not because of clearance...just too jarring). Most speed humps are not tall/steep enough to be of concern at reasonable speeds...but if unfamiliar I will slow the first time to be sure.
 
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