Tassem

Hello all, I recently lowered the rear end of my 2010 E350 CDI and now it scrapes ~10% of the ridiculously designed road humps on my usual routes. I crawl over and diagonally wherever possible but sometimes the scraping is inevitable.

What are the parts I could possibly damage if this continues? I still haven't installed the springs for the front so the car will drop another 15mm once I'm done and its a nightmare! The lowering was done primarily to level the car out because the rear end sticks up way too much in the vehicles specced here in India. I'm thinking of getting buffers to slightly lift the vehicle but still keeping it level. This may let me skip installing the front springs altogether.

The scraping is not violent like sometimes when one drives fast over a hump etc. More like sliding over something. I don't mind if it's just the noise insulation covers that are doing this. Will put it up on a ramp over the weekend for a visual inspection. But I'm worried if I may break something in the meantime.

Please advise!

A pic for how it currently stands (the rear is now lower than the front )

S-Prihadi

What are the parts I could possibly damage if this continues?
01. Your wallet.
02. Your ego

C'mon dude, I am in Indonesia and I have the same problem as you, hence I will never lower my W212 and for what ?

The exhaust silencer middle one is the first one to get scraped if for my engine version exhaust system.
Sometime this speed bumps big one made by DUMB-AZZ, will scrape my exhaust.

Look at the scraping on the speed bump itself.....



We call speed bump in my "local" language as SLEEPING COPS ...LOL





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Jokes aside, here are the damage I got so far.

Typical speed bump scraping middle exhaust silencer




Sometime in a rural area, new tarmac to soil height difference is high, our engine oil pan protection steel plate can scraped too when one of our wheel is on the soil.
Make sure you always have these steel protection plate installed.


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Some parking building dumb-azz design can cause front spoiler minor damage too. My front spoiler is surely lower than yours.



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Not only speed bump , but entry to a location from the main road.
I am based in Jakarta, but drive to Bali sometimes and I notice in Bali the dumb-azz property owners when they make roads to building interface/slope, they use tall SUV ground
clearance as reference. See red zone I marked, those can scrape undercarriage of W212.





If you are unlucky , the black hairy sound shield under the car can get damaged and brake lines too. Below is damaged in Bali.
From this stupid sloping tarmac

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In 2023 I damaged once more the hairy sound shield at under carriage. This time at my barber. But it was not so bad, so I can patch it.




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The local Jakarta Gov made new side walk on the road and it was high. So bad luck for me.



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So, be careful. Don't lower your W212 is my advice.
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Raj1471

Indian roads and lowering a car suspension wise should never be uttered in the same sentence...

Quint22

Western WA state (US) should be in same category. Get hundreds of millions of dollars and cant fix anything that matters. Heck the bridges only get fixed when they are told last few months of operation. Could not imagine lowering a benz, they are already low enough IMHO.

Tassem

Thanks a lot for your reply s-prihadi. For some reason I did not get a notification of the reply and did not see it till today! Laughed at the sleeping cop comparison

So about a week or so after posting here, I had the car up on a lift for a rear muffler delete and had an opportunity to thoroughly inspect the underbody. I'm happy to note that the scrapes are negligible. I guess it sounds a lot worse than it is when sitting in the cabin and navigating horrible speed bumps.

However, the two black sound deadening sheets at the bottom have some damage at one part (not because of lowering, it's always been there.) I'm wondering if I should just remove it and not bother replacing. I'm sure Mercedes would charge a ridiculous amount for it, only for me to tear it up again in the near future. What are your thoughts?

I'm feeling brave and stupid and will be getting the fronts fixed over the weekend mostly.

Tassem

If only all my decisions made logical sense How I wish the roads here were good. I'm at bangalore where speedhumps are one layer short of a wall!

The indian specced W212 came with ridiculously high suspension which makes the car look weird. Worse is that the stance is mismatched front and rear with the rear being about 2" higher in wheel well gap compared to the front. And to add to the misery this suspension felt soft and squishy and bob about quite a bit. My original goal was to level the vehicle and stiffen things a bit. But after a couple of months of failed research I decided to just import lowering springs from Eibach. Went with the Pro Kit which stiffens things up nicely with enough lowering but nothing too aggressive.

juanmor40

Be careful, those undercarriage plates have more than one purpose: one is sound deadening (you may not needed, so you can delete), and the other is to prevent fluids, rocks and all kind of surprising things to get into the space upward. What is there to protect: ELECTRICAL/ELECTRONIC parts.

You want to fry your electronics on a rainy day driving at reasonable speeds? Then, MB prices will look like buying candy for the kids.

JettaRed

iTrader: (1)

As nice as the underside of your car may look, nobody sees it. I definitely would NOT remove the underside splash shields. My concern is that by lowering the car, a cross-member or the edge of a muffler would catch and be ripped off the car.

The one thing I liked about my 2004 SL500 with ABC is that you could raise and lower the car for rough and smooth roads. The ABC would also automatically lower the car at highway speeds to be more aerodynamic. I think originally, raising the car would allow parking on the sidewalks of the narrow cobblestone streets in ancient cities in Germany.