Help - slope into underground garage is too steep for car

[limpsfield]

I have just bought a Lotus Elise 111R. I have a space in a communal garage which is underneath the building, accessible by drving down a slope.

However, when I get to the bottom of the slope where it starts to level out, the front of the Elise scrapes along the ground so I reversed back up.

Now I know I could use a couple of planks of wood to get round this problem but does anyone know of a more elegant solution? It would need to be portable - i.e. so it can be moved back to my bay in the car park. The car would not be used much during the week so it is not something I would need to do every day.

There is space above ground to park it, but I would rather it was in the garage. All sensible suggestions gratefully received.

Thanks.

[jb111s]

Approach it at an angle rather than heading straight on. When you get right near the bottom turn it as far as you can so the nose doesn't dip & scrape so the side lips of the front clam approach the dip first not the centre of the car. You'll probably find it's the number plate doing the scraping as it's slightly lower than the clam. You could also get a smaller number plate so you have more clearance.

There's a slope near mine thats a bugger going down, but with a careful swerve at real slow speed I get away with it (unless I've got a passenger).

Get someone to check for you so you can see exactly what's scraping.

[Esprit]

You can also try reversing down the ramp.... certainly does the trick for me, getting out of my driveway.

[Hollywood Wheels]

What Gerorge says. Might be a pain, but reversing down the ramp will sort the problem.....

[bencollins]

erm dont laugh but you could ask the building owners nicely to do a mod, or even do it yourself if they let you, reckon it would be two hours with a bag of QD cement in the dead of night, use 2 strings to keep it neat.

[Sam_68]

I've had this problem on a drive, before.

The solution I used - you'd need the building owner/management company's permission of course - was to fit a couple of the moulded rubber/plastic speed control 'bumps' that you occasionally encounter in supermarket car parks. These need to be very carefully positioned near the base of the slope, so that just at the point where the nose of you car would normally startt to scrape the tarmac at the bottom of the ramp, the front wheels encounter the speed bump and it kicks the nose of the car up a few inches.

I used the same technique to kick up the back end of my car (which only has about 75mm ground clearance) to prevent it grounding in the middle of the wheelbase as it went over the top of the ramp, too.

Or, as Ben says, get the builing owners to simply adjust the base to the ramp by adding concrete fillets, so that there is a two stage transition in gradient.

Edited by Sam_68 on Sunday 27th July 14:07

[tricky 100]

Of course should any of this remedial work cause damage to somebody elses car that uses the car park then make sure you have a good solicitor at hand .

[jons_s3]

Sam_68 said:

I've had this problem on a drive, before.

The solution I used - you'd need the building owner/management company's permission of course - was to fit a couple of the moulded rubber/plastic speed control 'bumps' that you occasionally encounter in supermarket car parks.

Edited by Sam_68 on Sunday 27th July 14:07

Possibly the one and only situation where you'll ever hear a Lotus owner advocating speed bumps!