Lowered my car - now there's rubbing

[sesshoumaru]

i think the problem is your shocks arnt stiff enough.

rolling the guards might help, but just one word of warning, it can cause the paint on the wheel arch to crack... and if it's bad enough you'll need to respray the whole guard.

[Alpine]

I suspect you may be right about the shocks aren't stiff enough. Hell, it's only a 1 inch drop. Beats me how all you other people drop it by 2 or 3 inches on the stock shocks and claim there is absolutely no rubbing!

[LowEk]

something no one has said is there is a seam on the chasis in your wheel arch cut it about every inch or two and bash it all up all the way along i had probs with that cos i have 18's and coilovers and i have my car pretty low i still get the odd scrape now and then ive had my guards rolled they can only roll the rear guards as there is not much to roll on the front plus ive taken my inner plastic guard out and cut it so it only covers up the back of the front guard so i dont get rocks in my doors.
LowEK

[sivic]

get your shocks replaced as that will help. get koni yellows or KYB agx's so you can adjust the hardness. 17"s will start scrubbing on a civic so getting the gaurds rolled is a good idea, unless your rims are 7.5" wide, then it wont do shit.

[CivicCoupe]

On my coupe, I'm running a similar setup (ie 205/40 on 17's) although the only difference is that I dropped mine 2 inches. I haven't experience any sort of rubbing at all actually.. I'm on my stock shocks too.

However, on my old twincam rolla I dropped that 1.5 inches with king springs and I put 15's on it. It rubbed like crazy on sharp turns and sharp dips on the free way like you mentioned. The solution is what everyone has mentioned already, and that was to lip my guards. Never rubbed again ever after that.

[CIV73C]

sounds to me like its ur tyres rubbing on ur guards, have u had them lipped? my civic's dropped by 2 1/2" on 17" and i dont get any scrubbage even with full car + stereo

FUSION VTI: did u get ur gaurds rolled at all!? or are u just sittin on super lows with 17z wif no rubs?

[speedracr]

umm hold on for a sec. The purpose of a shock absorber is to control a spring's oscillations. Springs keep the car suspended and are also primarily responsible for this 'stiffness' issue that people are talking about here. That is why springs are measured in kg/mm: the weight in kg required to make the spring deflect one mm, eg: 16kg/mm springs are stiffer than 6kg/mm springs.

I'm certain your problem is the wrong offset wheels. The offset is usually stamped on the back of the wheel. If it is 35 or in that ballpark, then that's the culprit. Since your rubbing is occasional, I'd hazard a guess that you have a 40 offset. Rims with an offset between 43-45 should solve the problem.

Can you give us more info tho; is it rubbing at the front or back or both?

[Alpine]

From what I could hear, it seems to be just the front.

[speedracr]

From what I could hear, it seems to be just the front.

Try removing the plastic screws that hold the splash guard on and 'tuck' the slash guard into the lip to hold it in place. It might just be rubbing on the plastic screws.

[fusion_VTi]

FUSION VTI: did u get ur gaurds rolled at all!? or are u just sittin on super lows with 17z wif no rubs?

yeh bro i had the rear guards rolled, think it cost me like $60

[Alpine]

Try removing the plastic screws that hold the splash guard on and 'tuck' the slash guard into the lip to hold it in place. It might just be rubbing on the plastic screws.

Thanks mate, I'll give it a try and report back after a few days.

[civtec1]

go with the gaurd rolling dude as it is a cheep way to solve the problem. any local suspension place should be able to do this.