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156 SWagon Ridehight

2K views 33 replies 13 participants last post by  Harry_P156 
#1 ·
Not having owned a sports wagon previously the car seems to sit very low and does not seem to have much room in the back wheel to arch hight (sorry cant think of the name right now!)

But is it meant to sit low or should my back suspension be looked at? If anyone can give me the hight distance for the back wheels to arch that would be great, as I live next to 100s of speed bumps it always feels rough going over them even at 5-10mph

Thanks in advance
 
#6 ·
Interesting, I can only get 1 finger in from top of tyre to wheel arch arghh :(

The fact it passed the mot makes me think someone has lowered it maybe? Will try and get it up on the ramp next week and have a closer look.

Would self leveling be standard or optional extra then? Any idea on costs to repair or get parts!?
 
#4 ·
.. mine is minus one finger thanks to Mr Eibach :cheese: Only joking, the only way is to measure the distance from the bottom of the wheel arch to a level surface; I'm sure we will then give you the answer.
 
#8 ·
a lot of people strip out self leveling Novimats as they're a pain in the backside and expensive to replace once they've had it.

post a picture up, we should be able to tell you if it looks lowered or not!
 
#17 ·
If you originally had self-leveling shocks and the PO has replaced them with standard shocks then you get exactly this problem. The springs that are made for the Nivomats are different to standard springs since the Nivomats provide a degree of spring compression themselves and so the ride height is dependent upon matching the correct springs to the right shocks.

Mike
 
#23 · (Edited)
Not sure what your garage did but it does sound like they spun you a bit of a fairytale to explain buggering up the original job...
Nope, definitely not. The shocks that came out caused the rear ride height to drop. Putting standard springs in brought the ride height back up to spec.
The original shocks were providing a degree of spring tension, so were matched to softer springs which don't work properly with standard shocks.
As I mentioned before, this was on a NZ Sportwagon, so it may have been using a different type of self-levelling shock to the standard Nivomat.

This is what came off the car (http://ricambi.alfisti.net/popup_image.php?pID=8162&imgID=0), the standard shocks look very similar and will fit using the same springs as these - but with the problems highlighted above.

Mike
 
#24 ·
you need new springs and shox, that is too low. I replaced mine last year, cost about 300 quid for the back pair fitted.

if you take the wheels off you will prob notice some damage to the wheel arch and some balding on your tyres were it catches in the arch.

i can get about 3 . 4 fingers between the to of the tyre and wheel arch.. since i replced my rear suspenision the ride is noticably softer over teh bumps
 
#28 ·
You can swap the back for standard springs and shocks but you risk the back end sticking up high in the air.
Their are no sportpack springs listed for the rear of the SW. The front has sportpack springs which are 20mm lower which is how much higher your rear will stick up in the air.
You can't reuse the springs off the nivomat, they are not firm enough and your rear will sink very low.
As you can see the only solutions to maintaining ride height front/rear are replacing all your shocks and springs for standard or 30mm drop sport springs such as eibach, or cough up £1000 for nivomat replacements.
 
#30 ·
How much do you want? ;)

If I swap out for standard shocks and springs (this is a stupid question now) would / should I need to be replacing anything else there at the same time? Or would it be a straight swap?

I only ask as I've held off purchasing till I got a reply above and I don't want to be half way through a job and leave the car on jacks for a week for any missing parts I may need to order.

The car was bought for running the dogs around on the weekend so if its a 20mm ride difference im not to worried as the dogs weigh a fair bit ;) unless you can show me a photo of a bad job and it looks rubbish
 
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