THE main reason for bringing the nose upwards on a Delorean,was because of a safety concern,as the impact zone on the nose of a Delorean is ONLY AND ONLY in the Black bumper/ strip zone on the front fascia,with the heightened springs it brought the Black rub strip area on the fascia in a level plane should it collide or impact into another vehicle,you can simply check this out by playing around with your Sunstar Delorean models,if you put another model of the same size in the front of a Delorean model,in my case I used a 1978 Corvette Pace Car model,the black rub strip,or impact zone,with the front springs fully lowered,is about half way up on the impact zone (not very good),yet raising it(the nose on the DMC model) to what the factory raised it to, PUTS the impact zone(the black bumper area) square and flat to where it should be. You have to remember the impact zone,on a Delorean was engineered ONLY in the black area of the front fascia,if impact occurs above the black strip(the headlight area or above) the Delorean has almost ZERO impact resistance,meaning that all forces of a impact will be aimed at the passengers(along with the hood),the other problem that can happen on impact with the lowered suspension,if impact should occur above the impact zone what could possibly happen,seeing that the hood being hinged in front,and at a raised angle could become sort of a SS galatean,impacting with the passengers, that is one reason that the Nose of a Delorean was intentally or unintentionally made to Shear off, if a very hard impact should occur with a Delorean at least that is what happened with Vin # 5520(one of my ex.parts cars)that is the one that lost/broke a ball joint/ lower A arm on the Massachusetts Tpke.and went head on,at full highway speed, into a little foreign car and killed one person and paralyzed the other.THE complete nose sheared off ,to within 12 inches of the front firewall/windshield,because the impact zone worked as it was engineered to work.)yet both doors opened perfect. From what I could sense,It was a last minute engineering thing,much in the same sense as not using a SS frame,it was to costly to re- engineer the front impact zone to a much higher level of plain(higher up)so rather than do that,it was decided to raise the car(the nose) using taller springs,giving it the"dog sniffing the air" look,but engineered to take a impact in the black bumper/impact zone. Hope that explains it CBL --- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Eric" <hollywood2311@...> wrote: > > I just measured my own car (100% original suspension), and it measured > in at 17.5 inches from ground to the bottom of the flat black front > bumper. A full 1.5 inches more than the 16" as stated in your post > (and this is obviously not taking into account any "sagging" the front > suspension has done since it was built nearly 25 years ago). > > > Eric Campbell > Hickory, NC > VIN 1776 > > > --- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Mike Bosworth" <mike.bosworth@> wrote: > > > > Hi All > > > > It has always been quite a talking point on this side of the 'pond' > > too, a number of documents i have sourced clearly show the > > regulations in the US for bumper heights and damage caused by > > impacts to these at the time of the production of the DeLorean. This > > particular info is taken from:- > > > To address comments privately to the moderating team, please address: moderators@xxxxxxxxxxx For more info on the list, tech articles, cars for sale see www.dmcnews.com To search the archives or view files, log in at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dmcnews Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dmcnews/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: dmcnews-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/