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When I jacked up my c7 I noticed that under the front bumper there are two metal bars that come down through the plastic and then back up into the car. They are located on both sides of the car about a foot back. They're black and have a small hole drilled in them.
Does anyone know what these do? One of them is scraping on my driveway hard enough to gouge the metal and leaves visible scrape marks across the concrete so I'm worried they're a radiator support or something important but I'm hopping they're bumper savers doing exactly what they're intended to do.
Great... Why would GM leave these just hanging under the car unprotected?! It can't be uncommon that people scrape these considering how low they hang.
P.S. I'm talking about the core support the guy attaches the bumper savers too in the video C7Jake posted. I'm not totally sure how putting a wheel on it protects it from breaking as that support is still holding all the cars weight... It's just rolling instead of scraping and I'm sure it's the weight of the car breaking the support not scraping.
http://www.saccitycorvette.com/C7Fangs.html
Fangs work by allowing the skid bars to slide over parking blocks, etc., instead of the soft aluminum digging in and getting traction causing the skid bars/lower radiator support to break.
Thanks Jake. The issue I see with both of these options are that all they do is protect the core support from being scraped up, which is purely a cosmetic fix. I couldn't care less about the support being scraped, what I don't want is it to break and need replacement. As I understand the reason the support breaks is because it's made of aluminum and not designed to support the weight of the car from below. Neither of those options distribute the weight of the car off from the support. I did see for the fangs they say that it prevents the supports from digging in and catching causing it to break, which makes sense if the supports are designed to hold the weight of the car, but I don't believe they are which makes me think that's just a sales pitch trying to sell me a product they know only provides cosmetic protection.
Just to be clear I am not hitting the support with any speed, I'm going about 1-2 mph turning at a near 90 degree angle to my driveway and the outside wheel nearly comes completely off the ground while the core support scrapes along the driveway.
Thanks Jake. The issue I see with both of these options are that all they do is protect the core support from being scraped up, which is purely a cosmetic fix. I couldn't care less about the support being scraped, what I don't want is it to break and need replacement. As I understand the reason the support breaks is because it's made of aluminum and not designed to support the weight of the car from below. Neither of those options distribute the weight of the car off from the support. I did see for the fangs they say that it prevents the supports from digging in and catching causing it to break, which makes sense if the supports are designed to hold the weight of the car, but I don't believe they are which makes me think that's just a sales pitch trying to sell me a product they know only provides cosmetic protection.
Just to be clear I am not hitting the support with any speed, I'm going about 1-2 mph turning at a near 90 degree angle to my driveway and the outside wheel nearly comes completely off the ground while the core support scrapes along the driveway.
Each scrape weakens the metal. Each impact only affects the hit section of the support. These covers distribute the impact over the entire support. Imagine a 100lbs poke in the forearm vs the same 100lbs distributed over your entire forearm. The poke is going to leave a bruise; the spread won't.
Hi efarley,
The Fangs are more than just cosmetic protection. By reducing the friction on the skid plate it takes a lot of the stress off of it that causes breakage. Kind of like a street tire spins easy (low friction) when doing a burn out, the stress on the drive train is low. But put a slick on and do a burn out there is much more fiction that can cause things to snap.
If your Vette is rubbing so hard that the wheel is almost off the ground that is a lot of pressure and the Fangs would definitely help keep from breaking the lower radiator support. But if rubbing like that day after day to get in and out of your driveway the Fang would eventually wear out.
Hi efarley,
The Fangs are more than just cosmetic protection. By reducing the friction on the skid plate it takes a lot of the stress off of it that causes breakage. Kind of like a street tire spins easy (low friction) when doing a burn out, the stress on the drive train is low. But put a slick on and do a burn out there is much more fiction that can cause things to snap.
If your Vette is rubbing so hard that the wheel is almost off the ground that is a lot of pressure and the Fangs would definitely help keep from breaking the lower radiator support. But if rubbing like that day after day to get in and out of your driveway the Fang would eventually wear out.
Thanks
Christian
In fact one of the other things they do is stop that terrible aluminum on pavement noise! After scraping my "radiator supports" as GM calls them or Skid Pads in my C6, I actually added a 3/16 inch piece of curved aluminum. Still made noise but when it lifted the front it was only beating up on the pieces I added!
As soon as FANGS were available for the C7 I bought them! Great product. Recently going into a mall with a raised area, faster that I wanted (car coming faster than expected) I did feel something hit. Hardly noticed any scraping when I looked and saw I slightly scraped one FANG! This is a pic of my C6 damaged and my FANG install about 2 years ago. With my C6 I was very careful but the times it happened wereI was pulling into a driveway and a car was coming that caused me to not do my usual stop and proceed very slowly. In one case there was an unexpected dip.
I don't think I've heard of a single instance of the supports breaking. I have seen reports of the Granatelli wheels breaking off.
FWIW, as far as I know I've only scraped the supports once, going over a higher than expected speed bump. After that I put the fangs on, and I don't believe I've scraped them at all since then.
Well I just ordered my set of Fangs, thanks to everyone who pointed me in their direction. I hope they work to save me having to replace the radiator support, time will tell.
I don't think I've heard of a single instance of the supports breaking. I have seen reports of the Granatelli wheels breaking off.
FWIW, as far as I know I've only scraped the supports once, going over a higher than expected speed bump. After that I put the fangs on, and I don't believe I've scraped them at all since then.
The radiator support broke on one side on my wife's C6. The whole bracket was replaced, for about $600 with labor, IIRC.
These are completely useless, they do not protect against cosmetic damage to the front clip.
Your opinion. I had a set on my '02 C5 and they worked as designed. Nothing will help if you drive into something high enough to actually hit the front bumper.
No, they just protect against structural damage to the rad support.
Yeah, useless.
I think the miss comunication comes from the fact that the wheel things Jake posted are marketed as "bumper savers" and in fact they are useless for protecting your bumper as they're more accurately "core support savers" in which regard they are useful.
I could be wrong as I'm not the one who called them useless, that's just how I interpreted their comment.
11-23-2015, 08:54 PM
What are the metal bars under the front bumper?
In fact one of the other things they do is stop that terrible aluminum on pavement noise! After scraping my "radiator supports" as GM calls them or Skid Pads in my C6, I actually added a 3/16 inch piece of curved aluminum. Still made noise but when it lifted the front it was only beating up on the pieces I added!
