Change in clearance on the VAZ-2114 as a tribute to fashion

2024 Author: Erin Ralphs | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-19 11:42

In order to understand how to change the clearance, you need to know the meaning of the word itself. In Russian, this is ground clearance, or the distance from the lowest suspension point of a car to the road. The highest ground clearance has off-road vehicles designed for driving on dirt roads or completely off-road. That is, SUVs and crossovers (over 200 mm). The lowest clearance in sports cars is below 120 mm. Sedans, station wagons and hatchbacks with medium traffic and a distance from the bottom to the road within 140-200 mm are intended for urban roads.

Introduction

VAZ-2114 is known to all fans of the Russian car industry. This is a five-seater hatchback with five doors. A modification of the VAZ-2109, which was produced back in Soviet times, has undergone a restyling of the front part of the body, including headlights, an additional body kit, bumpers, a decorative design of the radiator grill and hood, the installation of a more powerful modern engine, an improved steering column, and a replacement dashboard.

In 2014, the production of the entire Lada-Samara line wasstopped. But beloved by many models, improved, with low or high ground clearance, the VAZ-2114 still roam the vast expanses of our country, and not only.

Sport tuning

Together with racing, the fashion for sports cars quickly burst into life. All manufacturers began to introduce cars with sporty characteristics (low streamlined body, powerful engine) into the line of manufactured models. Fans of sports style with limited financial resources began to tune the usual cars they liked. Connoisseurs of the Lada-Samara line undergo a hard restyling of the body and suspension of an iron friend beyond recognition, lowering the clearance on the VAZ-2114 from the standard 170 mm to a record level.

This is done by many to change the appearance - it is prestigious to stand out from the crowd. And someone in this way increases the stability of the vehicle on the roads, which is especially important when operating the car at high speeds. This is achieved in several ways:

1. The most primitive is the replacement of wheels with smaller diameters. Additionally, it may be necessary to replace the brake discs due to mutual incompatibility.
2. Cutting or replacing standard springs in springs or shock absorbers. An inexpensive way, but not safe. When trimming, the destruction of the spring itself or other spare parts may occur, since any part is designed for a certain load, and reducing the number of turns reduces its resistance. Therefore, it is better to purchase specialshorter springs.
3. Completely change the suspension itself to pneumatic or hydraulic. This significantly increases the cost of work, but the result is excellent - the ground clearance of the VAZ-2114 can be adjusted without leaving the passenger compartment (with a button or lever).
4. Adjusting the tension of the springs or using coilovers - but the maximum lowering here will be 20 mm.

Reality of Russian roads

Roads in Russia are terrible. Their condition makes foreigners panic. Well, the locals have no choice but to drive through potholes and pits, through winter impassability, through autumn potholes flooded with water, to patch up the suspension every year, which means enriching the owners of car services. The option to buy a cross-country car is not an option. After all, these are, as a rule, new cars, and their prices on the world market are growing every day.

Increased patency

What to do if you just like the look of Lada-2114, but don't like the height? The way out of the situation will be to increase the clearance of the VAZ-2114. After all, even the AvtoVAZ plant at one time produced an SUV Tarzan (1997-2007) based on model 210924. And since pleasure is not cheap, people are trying to increase the ground clearance of their iron friend in advance, while saving on repairs.

The increase in ground clearance for the Lada model can be achieved in several ways:

1. Basic option with the replacement of tires with larger diameters - entailsslower braking due to increased weight. Also, the increased ground clearance of the VAZ-2114 will be limited by the wheel arches.
2. Additionally install special (metal, plastic) spacers under the springs, replace them with a variant with additional coils or reinforced ones. But then the shock absorbers will also have to either increase or buy already modified ones.
3. They put buffers (special pads on the springs) that counteract compression forces.

In the first and third cases, due to technical features, a slight increase in clearance is possible, by only 20 mm.