[blinkme323]

Let me preface this by saying that we love our Volt, but has anyone else had issues with the front end clearance on this car? It is my wife's primary vehicle and while washing it the other day, I noticed that almost the whole underside of the front bumper is scratched and scraped.

I'm sure some of it can be attributed to carelessness on her part but this car does seem to ride pretty low. Any similar experiences out there / advice on how to fix? I was hoping that GM offered pre-painted replacement front bumpers, but that doesn't appear to be the case

Thanks in advance

 

[llninja]

Let me preface this by saying that we love our Volt, but has anyone else had issues with the front end clearance on this car? It is my wife's primary vehicle and while washing it the other day, I noticed that almost the whole underside of the front bumper is scratched and scraped.

I'm sure some of it can be attributed to carelessness on her part but this car does seem to ride pretty low. Any similar experiences out there / advice on how to fix? I was hoping that GM offered pre-painted replacement front bumpers, but that doesn't appear to be the case

Thanks in advance

The fix is to continually remind the wife that the car is really short, stay 3+ feet away from the concrete parking blocks and curb edges as the front end protrudes far from front tires. My wife still insists on creeping forward until the tires hit the bump. I can park a full 6 feet behind the end of the parking spot and the rear end never sticks out. It's a world of difference from our Suburban

We have the exact same problem with curb rash on the wheels. My wife wants to put the car right up against the curb when 18" rims and rubber band tires makes you pay for that maneuver. My wife was at a Chili's trying to park as close to a tree as possible to keep the interior cool, ruined a brand new wheel I just bolted on the car earlier in the week. Maybe I need to outfit my volt with big nobby tires and a lift kit.

 

[Mister Dave]

I'm sure some of it can be attributed to carelessness on her part .......

I don't know about careless. I scraped mine once. I wasn't being careless, I was being an idiot.

 

[viking79]

It is done for aerodynamics, high ground clearance is enemy to fuel economy. Just be careful, or not worry about it, or maybe spray on something to disguise it.

 

[rdunniii]

Mine scrapes all the time going in and out of driveways. Don't care, it's designed to take it.

 

[quirkySquirt]

Maybe I need to outfit my volt with big nobby tires and a lift kit.

(I know llninja's kidding, but hope anyways)

 

[Barry]

Most of the scraping is with the black rubber air dam. If it is the bottom of the bumper, that is a different issue. The nose is low and overhangs a bit, but even so, it should be hard to scrape it on anything but pulling too far into a perpendicular parking space and overrunning the curb or stop block. Still, a really steep driveway, or one that is both steep and has a dip (gutter) at the bottom, can sometimes scrape the bumper unless you are careful to cross at an angle.

If the usual driver of this car is not careful about those hazards, fixing the bumper will only result in it getting scraped again. On the bright side, the underside of the bumper is not very visible, so the damage is mostly hidden.

 

[Upper5Percent]

One's front spoiler can never be too low...

 

[JRRF]

The car is definitely low, but fortunately also not very long, so you don't have to pull very far in to not have your tail hanging out of the spot. My driveway has a very steep entrance and i recently had the curb cut down to help out. Now I don't always need to approach at a steep angle to avoid any scraping.

They could offer a lift kit for the Volt, but the weight would be a killer, and when it breaks (which those thing inevitably do), it will cost more than the battery to fix.

 

[Prohidium]

Scraping above the rubber air dam on the underside of the car is evidence of parking and riding the front of the car up on the curb/sidewalk.

Fortunately, that area is for the most part only visible from underneath while looking up and at least most of it is plastic so not much rust. Almost all sedans will do this these days when being parked and pulled in too far.

 

[wagondude]

The bumper clears most curbs just fine, but the air dam won't. The damage to the bottom of the bumper comes from steep driveway entrances rather than curbs, in my experience. Even entering at an angle, I scraped the bumper on ours the first day we had it. I was pulling into the lot of the strip mall where our insurance agent is to add the car to our policy.

 

[blinkme323]

Thanks for the insight everyone, it's good to know I'm not the only one in this boat! So I guess going forward, my options are to repaint or buy an new unpainted bumper? Im super OCD with my cars, so I'm sure I will fix it at some point

 

[Robin_V]

Excuses, excuses. You're all rationalizing a major and serious product design flaw.

I though that, as with most vehicles, you're supposed to be able to drive the car around town, on typical, existing roads. Not off-road, but just typical use in a typical American town, village, the City of San Francisco-even...which has steeper than normal grade transitions, trolley tracks, and the like.

–Are we supposed to get out, lay down rubber lift tracks when/where-ever this happens– I didn't think so.

FACT: The GM Chevy VOLT (all generations) has a serious design flaw, it can not clear typical road-grade transitions found in every home/town/city in the country. I test drove a 2017 on Sept 2nd in Santa Rosa, and in less than 3 miles on the return trip the sales REP in the passenger seat yelled at me to come to a complete stop before re-entering the dealership parking lot that has a typical graded entrance to allow for storm drainage of rain water, typical in virtually every retail and commercial parking lot in Northern CA.

...that, and the rationalizing about how to deal with it in this thread tells you everything you need to know, run away.

GM should be subjected to a class-action if that's what it takes for them to use simple common sense when designing a $40K product.