Bottomed out my ride for the first time!!

[my95tsi]

I just moved into my new home about 3 weeks ago. I have 2 other roomates living with me so 3 cars in one driveway makes it difficult to get out at times. A normal car can pull around the back of the house which leads to a bumpy gravel parking lot to get out. But my car is lowered so it makes it quiet difficult to get out. I have gone around the back in the past but i just have to go extremely slow but some times the bumper will scrap when the grass dips down behind the house, but its only grass and not hard ground. Well i pulled out around back tonite and i made it to the bumpy gravel parking lot. These bumps are pretty big so i watch out as much as i can and i drive slower than hell. I was just about to pull out of the lot when the road dips down alittle and wham i felt the car bottom hit. It wasn't huge but it made the hairs on the back of my neck go straight up. I was pissed it continued to go where i needed, came back and checked under my car. The engine support looked fine, I don't think much could damage that since its harder than anything. But i did notice a dent in my oil pan near the drain bolt. Its about as big as the area where the oil pan dips in towards the oil drain plug on a 2g. But its pretty spread out. No more than a 1/2 an inch i'd say dented in. I don't even know if i caused it. I never noticed it before and i've been under my car hundreds of times, but i'm also not the type of person to notice that stuff either. I know its not a big deal and its definitely not leaking. But when i look under my car after i lowered it i really began to notice how ther eis almost no clearance. I hear of people denting oil pans on lowered cars all the time but wouldn't it also be possible to hit the tranny too? It scares me now. I'm going to watch out for railroad tracks too but i have never had a problem with those yet. I was just wondering if anyone else with a lowered car has had problem bottoming out alot. I just hope this oil pan won't give me hell in the future.

 

[wret]

I just put in Tein Flex dampers a few weeks ago. Adjusted to the specified settings they were way low. The first shopping center I went through has a killer set of speed bumps. I thought this would be a good opportunity to test my new setup. BANG! Talk about the hair on your neck standing up! Ouch!

Needless to say I raised everything up a couple of centimeters and now as I approach a speed bump I observe the top for telltale grooves and chips, not to mention exhaust peices and other metal fragments.