my slammed mk3 and the lowlife.

[cliokam]

So i joined a while ago after buying my first car a mk3 clio, i got it for a decent price mk3 1.4 16v £1900 with 30,000 miles mainly due to the state of the paint work. i rarely come online so haven't posted much but as my car is currently of the road (will explain later) i have some spare time on my hands to post some pictures.
So this is the car on my drive the day i got it home

The interior was pretty much perfect

I added a £30 CF air filter and ran a cold air feed behind my headlight, this actually makes a pretty decent sound and looks good.

i personally love cleaned and stanced cars and straight away decided the stickers, wiper and renault lettering had to go, i also planned to dial in some stance and follow that up with some smoothing and a full respray.

Before

After

I then invested in some Spax coilovers, fitting them was a c**t of a job, i broke 6 tools and in the end had to angle grind my front right strut apart, the cover for the top mount leaked water in rusting the top mount bolt on solid.. have no pics as i was going mental trying to free the bolt.

anyway after 2 days work i had the fronts wound right down, and the rears with the adjusters out, this is how she sat

a month later and i had to change from a trade insurance policy to my own policy, being 18 with 0 ncb and a postcode which isn't the greatest means i am now paying £320 a month on insurance after a £600 deposit :/. Its a crazy stupid but after around 3 weeks of searching i lost my patience and it was the best i could find... i'm expecting the usual reaction i get when i tell people this, yes i searched around a lot, i both rang up and used internet for quotes, and i tried adding my mum... this was honestly the best i could get on monthly payments, my other option was £2600, but i didn't have that kind of money laying around, and there was no monthly payment option. at the time i was still in 6th form and only worked friday and saturday nights as i had exams etc to worry about.

So that slowed things down a lot but now im getting more shifts and slowly starting to work on the car again.

i wanted to go lower and a friend had a set of 15's for sale for £160, after a test fit i decided i would have them of him, was a good deal and they actually looked okay on the car, well they did in my opinion

a cheeky pic next to a friends polo 6n2

driving the car at this height was a pain in the ass, i had hardly any clearance, my cat scraped the road when there was the slightest bump or bit of camber, and i had to dodge pretty much everything.

on the second day at this height i scraped my sump on the high street i said to a friend "i think i should invest in a sump guard when i get payed" i'm pretty sure i jinxed myself :/ because that night this came into my path

Normally i would just dodge things like this but i couldn't stop in time because i didn't see it till the last minute, it was dark and there was a car in front of me and there were cars and a police interceptor on the other side of the road... i'm sure you will have seen traffic cops in bedford... they seem to be everywhere.

after hitting this at about 15mph it got trapped then lifted my car of the floor, made a loud smashing sound and flew out of the back, i pulled over straight away and noticed that oil was pouring from under my car... well there was only one thing that could be...

i left the car parked up over night and went and had a few drinks with mates... i couldn't be bothered to deal with it at the time.

after towing the car home the next day i got it up on a jack and cleaned up the sump to assess the damage

also put a big old dent in my cat

haven't decided how im going to go about fixing this, the sump is attached to the gearbox and it looked like the subframe gets in the way so you cant drop it out of the bottom (i may be wrong there).

so now my car has sat on my drive way over the weekend, i done a pikey bodge job on the sump using exhaust seal and then some chemical metal from halfords, i cleaned and sanded around the hole, then filled, sanded filled etc... i just hope that when i find a garage it will hold for long enough to get me there, for now i wont risking driving it on the bodge job because i don't see it holding for long. Any advice on what the most cost effective fix for this would be appreciated.

 

[before-i-forget]

looking good =] i've also got a mk3, how was it fitting the air filter and cold air feed? i pretty much have no experiance with working on cars and wondered if its an easy job for a newbie?
shame about your sump, hope it gets sorted soon.
thanks.

 

[joshsta]

Easy Kam, see you all the time around Bedford, nice n low .

 

[cliokam]

'before i forget' the air filter is pretty simple, but to get the old filter out the battery had to come out and everything is put together like a puzzle under the bonnet... its isnt difficult though... i did run a second pipe behind my bumper and up behind my headlight as well for a bit of a ram effect though and that meant the front bumper had to come off... wasn't particularly difficult. cheers mate, im waiting for 2 garages to ring back, and the others said they wont get me on their ramps ;/, would have a crack at it myself but i need to see if the sump can drop through my subframe.

josh the loud as fxck clio? lol, its crazy low on the 15's mate, i cant drive down castle road properly, got a little stuck on at retail, i find myself scraping bits of the road i thought were smooth as lol... i do love it. just not the repair bills :/.. its only been of the road for a few days and im missing it already need to get it sorted asap.

 

[joshsta]

Yeah the slightly loud one :rasp:was about to say how'd you manage retail with the new speedbump ! a killer!. Yeah saw a piccy of your sump on facebook! gutted .

Cant wait to get coilovers too! how much were yours and where did you get them? thanks

(Btw kam dno if you can remember we use to go to school together haha).

 

[cliokam]

lool, through the exit is pretty much the only way at retail xD... and when the chains are up i have to sort of wait on the wrong side of the speedbumps then when no one is leaving quickly sneak across while hugging the curb so only one wheel goes up xD.

yeah tbh i wanted coilovers before i started playing with wheel options.. i got them of masons cousin, think i gave him £300 for them if i remember correctly.. coilovers for mk3's are so expensive though, cheapest are aps and they cost just shyu of 500 after the cs discount through venom... and 520 i think it was through demon tweeks.

what school? rush? i think so but tbh most things before middleschool is a blur, think its the countless concussions from bmxing lool... doing a huge 720, under rotating then landing on your face can do that to you lool... i miss the days when i used to do that and casually get up like it was nothing.. getting old now xD lool.

 

[joshsta]

Haha must get some looks being that low . Yeah was looking at coil's for mk2 and they are still expensive (200-400) for a cheapy set.

Yeah from rush xD haha long time ago now! lol doesnt sound to fun ill stick to walking haha!

 

[Cookson]

Threads like this remind me why I despise "slammed" cars.

It's looks broke, you have to drive like a t**t, and you risk breaking down due to hitting a cats eye.

Totally defeats the object of having a car if you cant drive it properly in my view.


I hate instagram and its f**king shitty "out of focus" cuntish pics too.

 

[cliokam]

yeah, high street was quite funny the last time i went down it people look like OMG did wtf just happened.. then probly think im a t**t xD. just got a call back from the garage, he rang ernault ant they want around £250 for the sump, a little more than i was expecting, and after labour and gasket works out to around 490 hmmm :/

cookson, chill out, im at that age/stage where i want to do stupid things like slam my car, and there is only one way i will learn right? i was expecting to get flamed though, many do hate slammed cars, just not me... i will probly look back on myself when im older and think WTF was i thinking, but for now its what i want :L.

as for the instagram picture that is out of focus, you couldn't see the oil leaking in the original it was only after the ' s**tty "out of focus" c**tish' effects that you could actualy see anything.

 

[Revels]

I think it looked quite good when the wheels were silver but obviously not very practical at that height.

No idea how you afford £320 a month when you only work two nights a week!

 

[cliokam]

Cheers mate, im going back to the 16's when i find the best deal on the sump. im thinking of going for some dare (fake bbs) i like the way they looked although the 9j fitment on the back might mean i need to pull the arches just a tad.

It does handle amazing with the spax at this height as well, i never really pushed it on the 15's because they shocking budgets on that locked up under casual breaking and wheel spun in second 0_o. with the 16's and yoko advans the handling was better than i was expecting.

To be honest i thought i was slammed on the 16's until the (15's) but i still managed to get everywhere, could get over square speedbumps, short ones, long ones, there wasn't anywhere i couldn't go so in all honesty it wasnt as impractical as you would think, most people dread one or 2 roads in beford and don't go near them but i still managed them, just took a little longer.

im working 3-4 nights now, that was when i just started my policy, and i only had a month left before school ended and i got more shifts.it was also fine because of the dates i picked after paying my deposit i had around 5 weeks to get my next payment ready. i just have to be real careful with my money, i make around £130 160 ish a week now.

 

[Alastair.]

looks broke.

 

[cliokam]

care to elaborate on how it looks broken? If I had crazy camber, wide wheels and loads of stretch I would understand your point of view however it looks standard but low, and because of the 15's still has arch gap so you couldn't even say it looks like i have no suspension...

Not trying to start an argument just want to know why makes it Looks broken...

Excluding the fact I have a hole in my sump xD lol

 

[Mickb]

ha welcome to my world. ive done 3 sumps and 3 boxes.... and many more to come no doubt. doesnt put me off. and they where the unlucky times i got caught out. you learn to be extremely careful, not fan of bbs wheels but 9j would look good at the rear

 

[Josh-197]

I think you should stick with the original wheels tbh mate looks miles better

 

[plymcl172]

oh god, the youth of today.......

 

[cliokam]

haha it hasn't put me of either, just considering getting some sort of sump guard made up just so i have a tiny bit of protection.

The standard wheels are going back on when ever i find a garage to take it to, the only reason i want something different is because they just sit so far into the arches, and i don't really want hubcentrics.. i want to get my sump fixed and then i will start considering wheel options again after, the 9j's did make the back look real beefy but they take loads of stretch and a tiny bit of camber to fit and i don't want to loose handling because of stretch.

 

[danzel]

Don't get me wrong it looks good, but seems a lot more hassle than it's worth. 45mm springs give mk3s a nice subtle yet noticeable drop, and they never scrape, or brake, and are still a completely usable and day to day car. Fair enough I'm 19 and I love these "stanced" cars also, but they just seem like a right pain in the tits to live with, which is why I'd never bother.

 

[cliokam]

To be honest every one asked how i managed on the 16's and it was fine, it rarely scraped, i could have my car loaded with 4-5 friends and have no issues over bumps etc. the 15's had it stupid low and it was pretty much laying the cat on the floor which was hassle, but like i said on the 16's i had no issues with getting over anything. i did almost buy 45mm springs to start with but after seeing a lot of comments on buying coilovers if you want lows, i had a feeling i wouldn't be happy with them, and after looking at pictures i think the way they sit on 45mm springs sits them pretty much how they should be standard.

 

[Martin_172]

i agree, looks like the suspension is broken!, i like coilovers but i like them at a sensible height for handling, i done the whole slammed on coilover thing when i was 17 and after bump skipping through a bush backwords a few times, i started going for sensible height lol

 

[cliokam]

That's fair enough I understand some people are purely performance focused, if I had a cup or something quick it would no doubt be more set up for handling and performance than just being low, but even at this height it handles well, Probly would be a bit better if I raised it up but I don't have the bump skipping issues, maybe it's because they are spax coilovers?

 

[Jake007g]

Looks cool. I had my MK2 wound all the way down with no adjuster cups on 15" wheels with 55 profile tyres. I was a very crashy ride but I always managed to just clear speedhumps. It's now sat on 16"s with 40 profile tyres, and I've had to raise it up 20 threads to prevent the wheel from making contact with the coilover adjusters. Need more width to go lower but it's already on 25mm adaptor/spacers!

 

[cliokam]

Nice, 55 profile tyres sounds quite chunky! Lol. Correct me of I'm wrong but wouldn't wider wheels make it rub more? You need a lower offset? My standard 16's rub in the arches a tad but thats because I went to a little budget tyre fitters, he gave me pretty much brand new Yokohama advans on front for £20 each but he put profile 50 all around instead of 45's, it only rub around sharp corners with a passenger though and it's only light.. I want to change tyres or wheels soon though

I have to admit the ride is pretty comfortable compared to a lot of cars I have been in.

 

[Jake007g]

Nice, 55 profile tyres sounds quite chunky! Lol. Correct me of I'm wrong but wouldn't wider wheels make it rub more? You need a lower offset? My standard 16's rub in the arches a tad but thats because I went to a little budget tyre fitters, he gave me pretty much brand new Yokohama advans on front for £20 each but he put profile 50 all around instead of 45's, it only rub around sharp corners with a passenger though and it's only light.. I want to change tyres or wheels soon though

I have to admit the ride is pretty comfortable compared to a lot of cars I have been in.

Not really sure, but as it rubs on the coilover itself I assume I need to push the wheels away from the coilover haha! Suppose camber might sort it out but don't like the look of mad camber on the front wheels!

Depending on which part of the archliner you rub on, maybe some 5mm/10mm spacers would help you out? It's all a case of trial and error with lowered cars I find haha

 

[cliokam]

Not really sure, but as it rubs on the coilover itself I assume I need to push the wheels away from the coilover haha! Suppose camber might sort it out but don't like the look of mad camber on the front wheels!

Depending on which part of the archliner you rub on, maybe some 5mm/10mm spacers would help you out? It's all a case of trial and error with lowered cars I find haha

just had a look at your cars, its nice mate, i imagine the offset on those wheels is really high which must be a pain in the a** if your after the stanced/fitted look.

depending on where your hitting the coilover camber would make it worse, i have my coilovers pushed all the way in for negative camber on the front lol xD... drift stance ftw xD, but seriously i didn't want it on full possitive so pushed it to full negative and its stayed like that really.. its barely noticeable but it does make the standard 16's sit a mile into the arches though.

i quite like the way 8j offset 20 wheels look on the front of my car

spacers would stop some of the rubbing but not all of it, would be better to just put 45 profile tyres on.