HotRodNeil

I have a 2001 f-body, and I bottom out periodically. Will the C6 be worse? What do people do to prevent this?

JFTaylor

Only goin in & out of my sloped driveway. But it's the air dam

C6Tim

Yup, she's gonna scrape the plastic a bit. Just go slow when going in and out of parking lots and driveways that have the slopped curb (which is pretty much all of them).

streetpix

Has anyone here have direct experience using the height adjusting bolts to raise their vette a bit? How high? Searched, but didn't find any discussions....

Brad

JJC5

There was a guy once on here that raised his Vette about 1.5". I would just have a hard time doing that though. I think he had to because of his driveway.

6spdC6

On my 98 vert, 05 vert and 07 Z06 the airdam does scrape a bit on my gravel driveway& a few dips here and there. The dam is designed to take it and if you do a MAJOR NO NO its easy and cheap to fix.

mlongo99

Mine's lowered. I don't bottom out and haven't scraped anything other than the air dam. I hear others complaining at stock height. I guess it just depends on where you live and how you drive.

Ben Diss

Yup. There's a bunch of threads on this. Search for "lowering". I did it by turning the bolts three rotations CCW. Now I rub the air dam everytime I come and go at the bottom of the driveway. No problem though. It's a soft, flexible piece that cheap to replace when the time comes.

-Ben

ohmy

I think I'd get a new driveway instead...

6spdC6

My driveway is about 200 yards, gravel, very curvey and on the side of a hill. A new driveway is way to much $. Its much easier to go up and down carefully at about 2-3 miles per hour.

BigJoe

Depends on what you mean by "bottoming out". If its just scraping on a change in road height, like into a driveway, then yes the C6 is just as bad as the C5. If you are talking scraping the rockers over a high spot, the C6 is a little less prone to that due to the shorter wheelbase (assuming you don't lower it). So far with the C6 I have yet to scrape the rockers anywhere. My C5s, however, showed a lot of scars...

Thrill6

I have a C5 and C6, and at my mother's house the C5 scrapes the curb really bad when I back out of her driveway, the C6 scrapes as well but only real quick. I think the C6 doesn't scrape as much because the front end is shorter by about 5" and the front end can clear the curb faster so it scrapes less.

MNVette

I only scrape my front air dam going up my driveway - have never "bottomed out".

KENZ51

I bottom out fairly often, one road here in my Home town scrapes every morning, but not bad enough to cause me to go another route!

su8pack1

Just the air dam.

RICHY2001

Hope no-one is using their oil filter to sweep the road.

My 07 hits the dam dam on speed bumps and speed tables unless I go really slooooow.

torquetube

The C6 has a longer wheelbase than the C5.

kgelliott

I planned on going that route, also. I have a regular, sloped curb they use for new sub-divisions that allow the builder to hook up a driveway to it anywhere no matter which house design goes on the lot. Then they don't have to cut the concrete and put in a sloped drive entrance. I was going to get it done before getting the Vette last August, but my enthusiasm for purchasing the car right then was greater than for spending $2000 to have the curb and a few feet of my drive dug up and replaced. I held my breath the day I brought my new Vette home, took a very severe angle, and NO scrapes!! Totally shocked me! I really have my technique down now, and it hasn't done anything bad to alignment either. So, the driveway mod is still on hold. If you could see my drive entrance in person, you'd be impressed with the C6's ability to get over it easily!

shopdog

Yep, mine is raised 1 inch all round. I did it because I broke the lower radiator supports twice, taking the radiator with it the second time. No more problems with that. The air dam still scrapes sometimes, but that part is cheap and easily replaced. The lower radiator supports aren't cheap, and the radiator really isn't cheap, they aren't as easy to replace either.

The problem here is high crown intersections. I've even bottomed my 4x4 crossing one particular midtown intersection. Of course it doesn't have anything hanging down to break when you bottom it. The Corvette does, so it is really important to get it up high enough that the suspension bottoms before any body parts can hit the pavement.

Vet

Yes, I turned each of my trim height bolts about 3 full turns clockwise. Doing so increased the ride height roughly a half inch. Car rides and handles excellent, zero adverse effects from raising. I no longer scrape over sections that I used to scrape. I plan to go another turn clockwise to try to get closer to 5/8" - 3/4" up.

Raising the car like this WILL knock out your alignment a bit though. Maybe wait until you are ready for an alignment to do the height adjustments. My alignment was perfect from the factory, ran about 10k miles and tires had worn perfectly. I then raised my ride height as described above and now after maybe 2k miles or so, the tires are starting to feather quite noticeably on the outer edges (which makes sense after raising). I'll be going for an alignment before the end of the month.

As others have reported above, the plastic air dam WILL scrape now and then, and that's 100% ok. Sounds nasty but does no harm. The air dam was made to scrape, and there is nothing wrong with scraping it. However, a good reason to raise the ride height of the car is to avoid slamming the radiator supports, aluminum cross members, oil filter or anything else under there that can leave you stranded and also leave you with a very hefty repair bill.

Before I raised my car I had run over a plastic side view mirror that had fallen off a car right in front of me on the freeway. Sounds like no big deal, right? This mirror, seemingly very small, still managed to get slammed by my front aluminum cross member (leaving a big mark) and proceeded to get further crunched and it rolled along, squeezed between the road and the floor pan of the car. It made a horrific sound, I could feel every thump right through the seat, pretty violent really. Not fun. And just a mere side view mirror! Imagine if it had been something solid such as a stone or metal object. That's when I knew it was time to raise the ride height.

There are not many here at the forum that have raised their height. Most lower their height for appearance reasons. My C6... it is most important to me to get to point B from point A... without the use of a flatbed... I do a lot of long distance road traveling... reliability is key... some may feel the car looks "worse" when raised, but what looks best to me is seeing steep ferry ramps, severe dips, road debri etc in my rear view mirror after passing over them and NOT breaking anything.