Height Adjusting at Speed

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vulgalour
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Height Adjusting at Speed

Post by vulgalour »

BX ownership is good. People love the BX, and so do I. A few people have regaled me with stories of ones they owned and there's a recurring alarming story from people who had a BX when it was a nearly-new/used car. For some reason, there's this idea that you can put the BX in low WHILE YOU'RE DRIVING IT.

Where did this come from?

A couple of people have told me, while laughing jovially about it, that they put the car in low WHILE DRIVING ON THE MOTORWAY but the car behaved all jerky and weird when they did so they didn't do it again. Why would you do it at all? At first I thought these were just one person's daft stories, until I heard it from a good half a dozen strangers who all thought you could set the ride height while driving.
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Re: Height Adjusting at Speed

Post by rutter123 »

Not recommended as on the low setting your suspension will bottom out leaving no further travel, same applies on high settings there will be no travel just solid, the settings are for service applications only.
I suspect we've all done it at some point.
It's effectively the same ride quality as flat gasless spheres.
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jamescarruthers
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Re: Height Adjusting at Speed

Post by jamescarruthers »

I believe that some research was done by a magazine with a CX and fuel economy. The conclusion was is that a sort of intermediate height between normal and low worked to save a bit of fuel. It makes sense that this would work although you'd need to add an extra notch in the height selector lever to do it safely.

The BX is superb at normal height and your diesel is very frugal so probably just an FYI rather than your next project with Berloit!
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Vanny
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Re: Height Adjusting at Speed

Post by Vanny »

I used to lower the height on the motorway all the time, but admittedly not all the way to the bottom. It's a specific piece of elevated road which is pretty much always windy due to the local geography, lowering stops the cross wind getting under the car, improving stability.
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vulgalour
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Re: Height Adjusting at Speed

Post by vulgalour »

I have no plans to try this out myself, if the cross winds are getting a bit much I just slow down and that sorts it much more safely than faffing with the height lever.
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