Hello, I picked up our Prius III and absolutely love it. One thing that it does is slightly scrape the bottom of the car when I'm pulling into my garage from the driveway. My driveway is about a 30 degree slope and I've had cars do the same when there are lots of people in them. However, it was just me in the car last nite and it still scraped. Is there a way to 'raise up' the car so it doesn't scrape? Do you think a less low-profile set of tires or getting the 17" rims will help? Thanks, --Chris
No, getting bigger rims doesn't change the overall diameter and fatter tires would only make the car look dumb and funky. Have you tried entering the driveway at an angle? The scraping may not matter if you can't see it.
thanks 32kcolors. I did try entering at an angle (from the right) but it did't work. I'll try again from the left when I get home from work. Yeah, the scraping is only on to bottom of the car, probably halfway between the front and rear bumpers. However, continued scraping can't really be good for a brand new car in the long run. I don't want parts of my car falling off while driving down the street. Thanks, --Chris
I have a large "wedge" on sharp inclines to get into one driveway and going slowly over it at an extreme angle is the best solution. The only way to raise your car is to mess with the suspension. An airbag suspension would be a good option so you could drive normally, and then raise it on demand to get over large bumps.
It's pretty much entirely covered with large pieces of aerodynamic panels like the bottom of a hot wheel so I doubt you're scraping any individual component that would cause it to fall off over time. It should be able to endure minor scraping over the life of the car. Most of us (myself included) have some scraping at the front like in lutece7's pics. I've encountered a few driveways that cause scraping with all cars other than trucks and SUVs. However, they usually slope downward after going up the ramp and are more of a design flaw with the driveways than the cars. Blame the architects in this case.
You could always rebuild your driveway, should only cost a few thousand to avoid the scrapes, I just let mine scrape
I would try laying a couple of 2x6 or 2x8 boards on the drive way to drive on as entering or exiting the garage. This might raise up the car enough. I made small ramps of crushed stone, but my driveway is crushed stone.
Larger diameter rim/tire set can raise the car...in my case one quarter inch. But obviously this is not the solution to keep it from scraping. A 2x4 may be more cumbersome to get over every day and is likely to move or get tripped over...perhaps a three quarter inch sheet of cheap plywood just to the inside of the garage would give you enough clearance.
