Lowering a vehicle in NSW - recent changes?

[Jarred]

and check your insurance, mine only allows a drop of 30mm from standard, as long as its not lower than the WA law of 100mm clearance overall

more of an insurance company thing that anything else I believe.

With RACV I could only lower my golf 1 inch, to stay insured. Which is why I went with Just Car, they didn't even ask how low!

[Blitzen]

Well, have your say about it...This is the NSW Roads Ministers email address....

office@daley.minister.nsw.gov.au

Before anyone gets uppity about how I got this info, just Google his name and all his info comes up...

[peter-xll]

I had never thought about it from a 'damage to lines etc' perspective...always thought about the bumper! But that does make sense.

Does anyone know about the laws in SA? I've heard so many different stories;
- a 'set' maximum measured from lowest point; usually exhaust (yet nobody tells me what the height measurement is)
- varied from vehicle to vehicle, measured as above (lowest point)
- varied vehicle to vehicle; measured from wheel centrecap to wheel arch.
- 'as long as you can fit a coke can under it'

is it any of these? I assume its a car to car; I once tried getting a coke can under family friend's porshe GT3 and it just wasnt happening haha. Maybe i'll just have to drive to the local cop shop (in dad's car; just in case...) and get a definitive answer. The police in SA are going berserk on hoon laws currently anyway; anyone from SA see the Sunday mail the other week?! Road blocks for big burnouts, carpark takeovers...

[Preen59]

What a crock of ****. We may as well move to California at this rate..

[team_v]

http://www.ezyreg.sa.gov.au/pdfs/personal_transport/light_vehicles_pdfs/fact_sheet_track_suspen.pdf

SA Suspension allowance provided in the link above.

[Blitzen]

Easy way to get around the new lowering laws...If you have relatives or mates that live interstate, get your car registered there...You just have to say that the car is garaged there, and have the mailing address on the rego as where you live(it dosn't matter if you have say, QLD rego, but the mailing address is in Vic), so long as the mail gets to you, they don't care. I have done this for years(I lived in QLD, but had Vic rego for 2 years, and then lived in NSW, but still had Vic rego for 12 months, and I was pulled over many times, and the police never had a problem with it)...And lets face it, rego in NSW is way more expensive than anywhere else...It may sound dodgy, but it works.
For example, Rego costs for my Polo GTI(as close as I can remember...)
NSW...$800
Vic...$540
NT...$480
QLD...$560

[AGO41T]

ders nothing to worry about..

they will only pick on cars that are lowered like 3" tucking rim etc...

its a easy fix anyways, either wind coils up or put in some stock springs and go get it passed..

there are more headaches for other mods

[Nathan_B]

This is being discussed on another forum and the press release states that you will need to have the car approved for ANY changes, even 1cm.. anything above 5cm will be illegal and not approved

The biggest losers to this will be the 4WD community - think of all the rual owners that raise their landcruisers so they can drive them in the country etc etc

[peter-xll]

Thanks for that pdf team_v, I'n not sure why I have never found it...

[Yevvy]

Thanks for that pdf team_v, I'n not sure why I have never found it...

i think its bs. were there that many incidents when someone blew their sump and caused hazard because their car was too low? i've only heard of two and both of them were on quiet streets. its just another way to rip us drivers off.

[Water Boy]

All members on this forum u must sign this to help out all our NSW folks

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/94/help-save-the-future-of-modified-cars-in-nsw

[Rocket36]

I actually think that unless a modification is done with proper ADR approvals and/or engineer's certificate then it should be illegal. I think this is a good idea and doesn't affect 99% of drivers.

[Golf Houso]

I actually think that unless a modification is done with proper ADR approvals and/or engineer's certificate then it should be illegal. I think this is a good idea and doesn't affect 99% of drivers.

What about your HG Premier? By the same logic, that car would need an engineer's certificate to just be roadworthy.

[Rocket36]

What about your HG Premier? By the same logic, that car would need an engineer's certificate to just be roadworthy.

And it has all the appropriate certs. It will need more for the work I'm doing for Targa Tasmania though.

[Manaz]

I actually think that unless a modification is done with proper ADR approvals and/or engineer's certificate then it should be illegal. I think this is a good idea and doesn't affect 99% of drivers.

This is part of the problem.

The existing rules specify that a car can't be lower than 10cm for instance, but obviously can't specify the actual height of a vehicle, as there are different vehicles with different requirements/ideal ride heights, and being that prescriptive would either be incredibly restrictive of which cars can enter the country, or the ADRs would have to be modifed every time a new car was released, and they'd become huge (containing a database of the ride height of every car ever released in Australia), and that's not their purpose.

There was a perfectly good rule in place already regarding the minimum ground clearance (10cm). The NSW government, without help from or consultation with any of the relevant bodies (including the RTA!), has decided that this rule is apparently no longer sufficient, and has made an arbitary change to the rules, meaning that previously legally modified cars are at best now required to get an engineers certificate they didn't require before, or at worst totally uncertifiable and illegal even if not deemed dangerous prior to the date of the new legislation taking effect (and remember that the expert groups who determine whether cars are safe or not weren't consulted here...).

The fact that it doesn't affect 99% of road users is immaterial. Even if that's the case, that doesn't make up for the say 0.8% of road users who it does affect who haven't actually done anything wrong under existing laws, leaving the 0.2% who have done the wrong thing but who already fell foul of the existing laws anyway, and so this new law doesn't actually fix anything, but rather simply and needlessly makes life difficult for people who've actually done nothing wrong to start with.