Lowering Chase Vehicle ?

[Dario Albahari]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask about this. Anyways, is lowering suspensions on a chase vehicle a good idea? (Against wind)

 

[Warren Faidley]

Not really unless you totally eliminated any air getting under the vehicle. Ground clearance is likely to be more helpful than lowering it. Higher profile vehicles are always more prone to wind issues. Even a TIV is not 100 percent wind proof, as any disruption of the ground effect will allow the vehicle to be carried away, e.g., hit (lifted) by debris or more likely, the vehicle is unable to find a perfectly flat place to park without blocking the escape route from others.

 

[Dario Albahari]

Thanks!

 

[Randy Jennings]

I will second what Warren said and add that IMO, the ideal chase vehicle is between the two extremes - If you chased in a big rig - you would get blown off the road (so high profile is bad). If you chase with a low suspension/clearance you may have trouble getting out of some places even if you don't use dirt roads (after all you do have to pull off paid roads to look & take pictures). Also a lot of paved secondary roads are not the best and I couldn't imagine driving down them in a low rider.

 

[Todd Lemery]

I’ll be third in saying about the same thing. The higher you lift a vehicle, the more you put yourself at risk of a rollover Due to the higher center of gravity. Lowering a vehicle makes it a pain in the ass to do simple things like pulling into some driveways.
A happy medium is really the best in 99% of storm chasing.

 

[Jack R. Jester]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask about this. Anyways, is lowering suspensions on a chase vehicle a good idea? (Against wind)

If you want to have your cake and eat it too, you might want to invest in some air shocks. They'll allow you to change your ride height on the fly, though these things are usually made for trucks only for towing trailers. Actually TIV 1 used these to lower itself to the ground (the TIV 2 just anchored itself)

(I modeled this in CAD and had it 3d printed).
(If anyone is interested I was thinking of having a bunch of these injection molded to send out to people).

 

[Dario Albahari]

Thanks guys !