Too low?

If there's one thing I really like about my bus, it's how low it is. Pretty much every car I've ever had has been lowered, and normally as much as possible. I once lowered my old Golf Gti so much, that the wheels actually couldn't turn - it looked good, but sadly I had to wind the coilovers back up. That said, it was still pretty low...

Anyway back to the Splitty, it is low, narrowed 4 inches, dropped spindles and tubbed arches. This means that 2 parts of the car are very close to the ground, these are the steering box and the back box. Now, fortunately, the steering box impacting with the ground happens extremely rarely (although when it does, I do almost start crying), however, the back box frequently scrapes. Situations include:

- Reversing off my drive
- Going over the speed bump to get out of my estate
- Coming out of petrol stations
- Driving off road at campsites
- Being put on the back of "low" loaders
- Bumpy Roads

Now it was a combination of 2 of these that finished the back box off once and for all - To be honest, I actually think the majority of the damage was done in the "Low" loader incident of Newquay, specifically when the whole weight of the van landed on the exhaust. It was unpleasant at best.

So myself and my friends Rich, Jamal and Nat were on a trip to Brighton to pick up a surfboard for Rich. Problems started on an exit from a petrol station in Hove, that had a particularly steep exit. Result: Splitty wedged on the back box between busy main road and kerb - some revving, lots of scraping and many, many horrified onlookers later and we were off again.

All was fine for the rest of journey, then we decided to depart. For those people that don't know the roads around Brighton, the main road in/out of the place is the A23. It was whilst progressing along this road, in front of one of the main rows of show, when the engine note started to sound noticeably deeper. Whilst I was trying to compute the ramifications of this in my head, an MX-5 pulled up next to me, and told me that back box was lying somewhere down the road. Clearly this needed emergency attention - And I was stopped at traffic lights, on a red line. Oh dear...

Jamal retrieved the back box, and then I set about trying to rectify the problem whilst trying not to get run over. The issue was pretty evident, the welds holding the back box to the bracket that connects to the downpipes had completely broken off (see a future blog for more detail on this). Fortunately it seemed that I could wedge it back on, cue some slight reshaping and then some hard pushing. For extra safety, I tied the bracket on the back box to the bumper mount. All the while this was keeping Nat, and most of the traffic exiting Brighton highly entertained!

So, pleased with the fix, we set off back to Surrey. Approximately 2 minutes later, the sound of a deeper engine note and now metal scraping against tarmac filled the van. Not again!! This time I pulled in at the Travel Lodge. Fortunately my safety rope had performed its duty and at least kept the back box attached to the van, even if it wasn't attached to the rest of the exhaust system. More effective bodging was needed now, so in the Travel Lodge car park, and Rich bracing the manifold with his foot, and me using my tactical hammer, the back box was wedged back on.

This method proved a success, well until it fell off on the Hersham bypass a couple of weeks later and wouldn't wedge back on and I knew a more permanent solution was needed. Cue my next entry about buying a MIG Welder, learning how to weld badly, and getting back to owning a quieter bus - and then having to re weld the whole thing.

To be honest though, I'm not really too bothered about this problem, it's just a consequence of running the bus so low, something which I'd never want to change - If anything, I'd like to run it lower, but there's a lot more work that needs to be done before that can happen such as raised steering box (or even a steering rack conversion at the same time) and tubbing the rear arches, plus potentially an IRS conversion.

So, it's not too low, it's not low enough!