At the moment I have the stock standard shock all round, as far as I am aware the original factory ones. No faults however the seem to not take the weight too well. 2 average sized people in the back is enough to give me 2 palms worth of clearance between tyre and wheel arch. I do have 15" wheels that prob reduces clearance but should they be compressing quite that much under weight?

Even if it is normal I tend to carry lots of equipment around (sound engineer) and so I'd like to be confident even when fully laden i have plenty of clearance. Would firmer springs do it? I did wonder also if swapping the standard ones for lowering springs would be firmer and so keep my clearance fairly constant although overall lower.

Maybe it's the way you're phasing things, but I started reading this with a horrible (used advisedly) feeling that you were under the impression that dampers have an effect on static ride height. This is just plain not true, with the exceptions of a few towing dampers that have built-in user-controlled air pressurisation (effectively auxilliary air springs.

And, having brought that up, I think auxilliary air springs might be the best answer to your problem if you're happy with the ride when light, but concerned about the level of rear-end dip when heavily loaded.

That's normal!

How about a cheap solution of spring assistors?

Used commonly by towing cars to stop the suspension from "bottoming out".

Phil

Maybe I'm been a muppet but are you saying the dampers and springs aren't depressed when under load from additional weight in the car? What causes my car to get much lower when loaded then? I had considered going down the air shock route (idea was sparked by seeing a Citroen with height adjustable rear shocks). Would i need to source shock from another vehicle or do you know of a manufacturer who does them for the felly? I know i haven't seen them around.

Thanks Phil, will have a look at spring assisters. Cheap would be good!

What Ken was getting at (i think) is that the dampers themselves dont do anything in regards to how high the car rides but they just provide the resistance for the up/down movement of the wheel to keep the wheel in contact with the road etc.

The spring assistors will do nothing to lift the ride height but will at least help the suspension not to bump right down to the bottom and prevent any scraping of wheel arches etc.

Phil

Great ill give them a go!

If yours is a hatchback then what you want ideally is a pair of standard rear springs for an estate, which are stiffer (edit: and probably estate rear shocks too, as the bump stop length is different). Lowering springs may or may not solve the problem - yes, they will all be stiffer than standard, but they need to be to compensate for having less travel, so at worst you'd have exactly the same issue, but with less clearance to begin with and even less travel left to absorb bumps.

I think the spring assister option would be fine to do what you want and keep the tyres clear of the arches. Unfortunately, due to lack of availability these days, for the price of a really good Felicia suspension upgrade kit you may as well look at something like a cheap Astravan for the heavy lifting

As an afterthought, there were 'heavy-duty suspension' variants sold in some markets. I don't know how it compared to the standard suspension we got, but if you felt like investigating it might be possible to source non-UK parts from somewhere.

Edited 22 September, 201015 yr by RobinSLXi