I'm really surprised to find that I scrape on my driveway (always), and sometimes other places on my stock suspension MCS Cab! After close examination, it's not the visible lower air dam, but another black plastic air dam directly behind it .

Anyone else having this problem? Is there a fix? It's driving me nuts and I'm afraid the whole thing is going to get torn off!

 

I only hit stuff when my car was stock if it was really angled. How bad is the driveway. Maybe you could smooth it out a bit.

 

Unfortunately the black plastic flap you speak of is fastened to the wheel liners, so removing all or part of it can cause issues with parts flapping around and aerodynamics. You'll be happy to know however that i've been scraping mine up for the past year with no ill effects!

As for scraping, with any lower car you're going to have issues directly coming in and out of driveways. You'll have better luck if you swing to the side first and angle yourself down. Sometimes it confuses other people, but it's a necessary evil if you want to preserve the shiny plastic on the bottom of the car .

 

I used to live in a house which had a steep driveway slope and a "mountible curb" and my trailer hitch on my Honda would scrape unless I was angled so that one wheel would cross it at a time. Because of this I always am careful to enter my driveway one wheel at time with my Mini, even though if I'm going slow enough it won't scrape even if I'm square. I have scraped with my stock suspension twice on intersections or driveways which have valley gutter (depressed concrete drainage pans) which I crossed obviously to fast.

 

I can see it if the driveway was steeply banked...but it's almost flat. The culvert that runs along it isn't unusually deep or anything.

In a car like this, it really surprises me to scrape on a non-lowered suspension, considering how the car is built to be driven!

I guess I won't be recreating "The Italian Job" anytime soon!

 

my stock '03 MCS always scrapes if I enter the garage front-end first, but it's okay if I back in. So that's what I do!

 

'same here....love the "Bat Cave" exit! Oddly enough, it doesn't scrape either way into the garage -- go figure!

 

I only have the problem if my son's car is in half of the driveway and I can't exit at an angle.... (patience - he's a senior and will hopefully graduate soon.)

 

It's just the nature of the car. Even stock it's a relatively low-to-the-ground car. All the BMWs I've had did, especially the Z4. Perhaps the non-S would be less likely to do this. But there is never any real damage. You can still drive like The Italian Job. I'm sure they did their share of scraping.

 

I replaced the Dunlap Runflats, which had become too worn after just less than 12k miles, with non-runflats. For additional wheel protection, I went to 215/45/17...and lo & behold, my scraping problem has disappeared!

I didn't realize how hard riding those tires were until the swap -- now I have a MUCH better ride, and no scraping to boot!