Unsafe Mods - Extreme Dubs / Drifters / Stance etc.

[skyrover]

How long before we start seeing donks in the UK?

[andy_s]

mwstewart said:

TooMany2cvs said:

Since your car already gets a check each year - and since you modify sensibly - is there really much to worry about? It's not like it's any extra effort or requirement on your part, and it's not as if your sensible mods would fail...

Yes, it is. There's far too much red tape, risk mitigation, and regulation in all aspects of life now. Personally I don't want any more.

So if DoT tested stretched tyres/angled wheels/lowered suspension and found them to be more dangerous than normal cars & banned them for the safety of the other 99.5% of the road population you wouldn't want red tape/legislation/mitigation put into place to stop people doing it?

Either you presume i. it isn't unsafe or ii. even if it is it doesn't matter.

In any event it's a bit of a strange comment, and easy to make when not responsible for the consequences.

[Atmospheric]

balls-out said:

hmm
Enthusiast having fun with cars - GOOD.
Miserable keybord jockeys who have different tastes and knock others - BAD.

and no I don't have, nor want, a 'stanced car', but I am happy to let people follow their own path. Variety is the spice after all. Personally I think diesel is lorry fuel, but I don't go around bashing those who like it.

Edited by balls-out on Thursday 12th June 09:53

The issue is for me not what they look like, but on the roads everyday all day their cars are UNSAFE. The contact patches on the road are much smaller than they should be for the weight of the vehicle(s).

As much as people should do with their cars what they want, when you are driving in a nose to tail situation common to many roads, do you feel safe that they can brake and swerve adequately (if need be) in front or behind you? Supposing you've a loved one, or ones in the car? Can you guarantee the driver can drive around is misgiving and the compromises for a stanced over over/under cambered vehicle?

The part about fuel is irrelevant, I'm afraid.

The hard science of automobiles makes the stretched tyres and silly camber a nonsense.

[KarlMac]

skinny said:

I'm unfortunate enough to own an MX5. These are now cheap enough for skidder kids to pick them up, slap a set of £100 raceland coilovers from ebay, 8" rims with zero offset, a set of nankangs, rolled and pulled arches, and a noisy exhaust with a shiny tip at a jaunty angle. slam the car on the deck, until it scrapes, and put some stickers with cool words written in a flowing font up the side of the windscreen.

they might take a few pics of their car next to some graffiti or in a multistory car park.

the next set of pics is normally oops drift error, buckled wheels on kerbs, bodywork damage where they've hit trees or lamp posts etc. basically from driving like dicks on a public road in a car they've made handle deliberately badly for the sake of fashion. or maybe they got caught out by a small bump in the road...

There are a few that do it properly - with properly thought out mods. but the majority of stanced cars are done on the cheap by idiots who don't know any better and just want to be part of the scene so they can stand around their fashion statements in their skinny jeans around their skinny arses, taking pictures of themselves being cool and not giving a f***.

My personal suspicion is that its a backlash against the anti-Max Power movement of the last 5 years or so. Massive fibreglass body kits and stick on tat are rightly mocked these days, so the the kids have sort of 'taken over' the 'stance' look and either gone too extreme (for attention) or done it on the cheap.

Its still unfair to lump everyone in the same bucket, which was evidenced in the carpool thread. People saw a VW on coilovers and OEM wheels and immediately filled in the remaining narrative themselves. Bear in mind some of the owners spend over £1k on wheels and £2-3k on air suspension, they're going to take reasonable car of it and (you'd think) at least make it safe.

At the end of the day, bad modifications are bad modifications. Each scene will have its idiots that pass through as they come into fashion, then they'll pass on when the next thing comes along.

To the question from someone else earlier, I post her because the people i meet at PH events tend not to be the keyboard commandos that dominate the forum. Thanks for asking though.

[Mr2Mike]

balls-out said:

hmm
Enthusiast having fun with cars - GOOD.
Miserable keybord jockeys who have different tastes and knock others - BAD.

and no I don't have, nor want, a 'stanced car', but I am happy to let people follow their own path. Variety is the spice after all. Personally I think diesel is lorry fuel, but I don't go around bashing those who like it.

Cretins modifying cars to follow a sheep-like trend without a clue as to the impact on braking and handling - VERY BAD.

[dtmpower]

skyrover said:

How long before we start seeing donks in the UK?

When someone is dumb enough to lift a Vectra ?

Edited by dtmpower on Thursday 12th June 11:00

[CamMoreRon]

vx220 said:

Also, lowering the suspension affects the rollcentre of the car (not just C of G) actually increasing the angle of lean, meaning an even higher spring rate is necessary!

There's a big misconception on Roll Centre Height on t'internet.. it isn't the worst thing about lowering for the majority of vehicles and a low RCH can actually improve outright grip. The worst thing is bump steer, and fouling of other components when taken to the extreme. The notched chassis you see on a lot of Golfs is just insanity and should never be allowed through an MOT!

I have no problem with mild stretch / lowering and a small amount of camber.. it's creating cars that are basically caricatures, or slamming a car so low that you have to cut the chassis to clear the suspension components.

[CamMoreRon]

PS - All for seeing Donks in the UK!

[austinsmirk]

there was a lad in a white golf on BBC traffic cops a few months ago, who had a stanced, slopey wheels set up.

they waited for him in some precinct to return to his car and then nabbed him.

he has his mum with him I think, or it was his mums new golf that she'd allowed to be customised. Purely as I don't think an 18 yr old was likely to be running his own brand new golf !

[TooMany2cvs]

dtmpower said:

I am in awe of your photoshop skillz.

[Daston]

Every time I see these threads there is always one person banging on about air suspension.

"oh they will drive off normally when the show is over and they handle great etc etc"

I have never seen one of these sort of cars drive normally, the one that scraps over the speed hump outside my house every morning and night certainly dosn't nor do the 20 or so cars I see each week.

I would expect a vast majority of them are a desaster waiting to happen.

When I was 17 it was all about putting on sports suspension, increasing your break size, better flowing exhaust and INCREASING your contact patch.

Now it seems kids are hell bent on seeing how slow they can go. Wonder if I should start the red flag man craze. "Hey yo my ride is so sick i gotta have a dude with a flag to walk in front of it yo"

[jammy_basturd]

neiljohnson said:

Here's my take

Lad I used to work with bought this needing an mot I done the test & condemned it as it was so unsafe it was laughable!! Some of the bodges done to achieve the camber were scary with smaller bolts in the front hubs to allow movement & lots of washers on the rear!!
All tyres were scrubbed bald on the inner edges brake hoses rubbed wheels hit the arches etc etc

As a result he have it back to the seller & I have seen it since on the rd looking the same & I assume it's now got an mot from elsewhere!!!!

Who did you used to work with/who has bought it?

I know the lad who did all the work on that van!

[JDMDrifter]

I saw a MkV R32 golf yesterday, driven by a right dweeb. It was on its arse and had about 4 degree of camber on each corner. Why?! That's a lovely car in standard form

[mwstewart]

andy_s said:

So if DoT tested stretched tyres/angled wheels/lowered suspension and found them to be more dangerous than normal cars & banned them for the safety of the other 99.5% of the road population you wouldn't want red tape/legislation/mitigation put into place to stop people doing it?

Either you presume i. it isn't unsafe or ii. even if it is it doesn't matter.

In any event it's a bit of a strange comment, and easy to make when not responsible for the consequences.

You've missed the point I was responding to; I said I don't want another test in addition to the MOT - which, in my view, is sufficient already. I did not anywhere in my posts suggest that the modifications in the images within this thread are safe. I find them ridiculous.

[y2blade]

Greg_D said:

he's talking about the utter cretins who do this sort of thing to their cars



To cap it all off, they generally use the cheapest rubber as well becasue they are trashing them so often.

A compulsory 50-0 wet braking test would certainly be illuminating.

holy fk!!!!

[TooMany2cvs]

mwstewart said:

You've missed the point I was responding to; I said I don't want another test in addition to the MOT

Nobody suggested a test "in addition to" the MOT. Quite the opposite, in fact.

[GregK2]

austinsmirk said:

there was a lad in a white golf on BBC traffic cops a few months ago, who had a stanced, slopey wheels set up.

they waited for him in some precinct to return to his car and then nabbed him.

he has his mum with him I think, or it was his mums new golf that she'd allowed to be customised. Purely as I don't think an 18 yr old was likely to be running his own brand new golf !

It was a Polo, with hydraulic adjustable suspension and he got done because he was driving with it at a dangerously low level (evidence the alloy rim had been making contact with the body) If he'd just flicked a switch before driving off the Police wouldn't have been able to do anything.

[C.A.R.]

There will always be stupid modifications carried out by stupid people then multiplied by other slightly-more-intelligent-but-want-to-fit-in types who are so desperate for social acceptance that they will copy virtually anything in the name of making their car 'unique'.

Remember the 'smoothing' phase?

I remember one car which had been 'smoothed' to the point where the wingmirrors had been removed, but not satisfied enough that he went on to remove the windscreen wipers. Not just the blades, the whole mechanism.

This meant it couldn't be driven if there was a chance of rain (ie. at any time in the UK).

But it was justified because it was a 'show car'. It wasn't much to look at, in fact I think I'd have been more impressed seeing a bog-standard Punto Sporting than this particular Fiat Punto 1.2L.

Yet this still had a valid MOT.

I like that 'perfect' Corrado link earlier in the thread. You could outrun that thing in a Bus (the antichrist of PH). All you'd need to do is pick a route with at least one speedbump and it would need to come to a complete stop.

[detomaso]

[Jabosoc]

motorhole said:

Lowering to the point where suspension travel is minimal will cause the car to bottom out, smack bump stops and/or coilbind the springs when going over bumps and/or loading up in corners, dips etc. Any one of these events could be enough to cause a tyre to loose contact with the road mid-corner and subsequently, the driver to lose control.

How disastrous.





There's a whole thread dedicated to how awesome that is here.

lord trumpton said:

I can't decide what irritates me more....

The tts that wander around with their trousers hanging off their bottom or these silly cars with stretched tyres and collapsed suspension (stanced?)

Hmmmm

One and the same.

Kenny Powers said:

My personal view is that a car is a machine. It should be presented as it can be driven. Therefore I think that cars slammed on bags etc. that need something doing before you can drive off, are pretty rubbish.

Like when you have to wait for the glow plugs to warm up on a diesel?

Edited by Jabosoc on Thursday 12th June 13:32