I've ordered a 2015 Transit low roof T-250 but would like to drop it down a couple of inches. Some of the parking garages in Boston are pretty tight and in stock form it's not going to fit. I have contacted most of the kit manufacturers directly and most of them don't even plan on making a kit. We have a local spring manufacturer that said they could re-arch the leaf springs but that it would lose capacity and ride quality. Anyone have any suggestions or links?

 

I don't think there will be any easy way to lower these vans. Drop shackles won't work because the shackle is actually below the spring hanger and not above.
I would try taking out a spring leaf and add supplemental airbags for payload capacity. Up front you may need to find shorter coil for the oem struts.

 

Thanks for the reply Daewoo. I have been searching but no one is making anything for this van yet. My local spring company could likely do the custom spring for the front but even Timbren doesn't have a kit yet. Do you know of anyone that offers a customizable kit to do what you suggest?

 

I think that whatever you end up doing will need to be custom made. Removing a leaf spring from the pack should be fairly simple and would be reversible. At that point you could see if that dropped the van enough and measure from the axle to the frame/body to see if an airbag could physically fit. Air Lift and Firestone are big names in the supplemental air spring industry and may be able to provide airbags to fit.
Another option that I just thought of is a "spring under" conversion that basically moves the axle from under the springs to above them. New spring perches would have to be welded to the bottom of the axle, but that option would retain your current spring capacity while lowering the rear of the van 4-6 inches.

 

I'll be watching this thread. I have owned vans since 1986 and have parked them, including Turtle Top conversion vans, in various downtown Detroit parking garages.

We are having a new 4-car garage built in our back yard and with a 7 foot door, my van will finally have an indoor parking spot at home. I believe the new low roof Transit is a bit shy of 7 feet/84 inches tall(?) compared to my van at around 81 inches (E150 from 2002). I was considering a full size low roof Transit as an eventual replacement for my E150, but may just move to a minivan next time around for initial purchase cost...plus our son is 26 and done with Boy Scouts and other activities for which we used the van.

Parking garages have gotten taller in recent years, so instead of lowering the van a bit, you might do better to seek out parking garages that have something over 7 feet of clearance. I remember walking up a parking ramp years ago with my arm raised over my head (with my hand flat, palm up) to confirm that I could make it into that parking garage with my new-to-me Turtle Top van in 1988.

Good luck,
George

 

So far I have found the following:

Timbren is now making an SES kit for the Transit: FRTR250 The local spring company has not seen the listing yet but I got the info straight from Timbren.

Firestone is planning on creating an air spring kit but have no release date as of yet.

I still have plenty of time apparently - I got my VIN recently but no build date or even a windows sticker. Just the status that it has been "submitted to the plant".

As for the garages in Boston, most are limited to 6'10" maximum height which makes the Transit 1.5" too high. Some have tall vehicle parking on the first level but spaces are limited and usually fill quick.

As I get more info back from other companies I'll post it here.

 

hi there,
i know it's been awhile since your last post, but i was wondering if you ever came up with a solution to lowering your transit. i've got a 2017 on order and am hoping to squeeze it into my garage.
thanks

 

I can't give a reason for this, but the wagons are shorter RWB is 82.2 and LWB is 82.4, compared to the LR van at 83.2

It's not 1.5 inches, but its awful close to that 6'10 spec needed. If you can figure out the technical difference, you've got your inch. Perhaps it's just the weight of the seats vs an empty shell?

 

I used to know an elevator repair man that kept a 55 gallon drum in his van. If he needed to park in a low clearance garage, he just filled the drum with water. He said it lowered thr roof of his van between 1 and 2 inches.

Obviously this won't work for every situation, but if you need to squeeze into a short garage once or twice a year it might just do the trick.

 

This is a clever solution, kind of the like old story about the 18-wheeler who let air out of his tires to fit under an overpass that was an inch or two too low

55 gallons at 7 lbs per gallon is 384 lbs....wonder how much that would compress springs.

A lot of standard garage doors are 7 feet of clearance, and my old E150 had a couple inches of clearance. I looked at the Transits (but decided a minivan would better suit my needs) and the clearance of the passenger version was *barely* OK...to the extent that if there was a bit of snow or ice on the ground right outside my garage door I would have been worried.

George

 

In my early van conversion days I had to get all the people I could find to put them inside so I could get the van in the garage to work on it. Mom, brother, etc......
Worked great.

 

Water is 8.84 lbs per gallon. Be that as it may, you can get into heap big trouble dumping that water out of a drum in public places. Might just be water, but try 'splainin that to a cop.

 

I was def wrong at 7 lbs but I'm finding 8.34 lbs near freezing to 7.99 lbs right near boiling on a lookup. So if I eat a bunch of salty stuff at night and gain 5 lbs on the scale the next morning, I'm holding over an extra half gallon....

However I just learned that an Imperial gallon is defined as 10 lbs of water, so thank you for giving me the opp to learn something.

I agree about dumping water in a public place. If I was a cop and saw someone draining a drum full of water, I might make the assumption that it was contaminated with chemicals like antifreeze, cleaning solutions, or insecticides. If I had a drum full of water I'd take it home and use it to water my wife's flower beds or something...using a soaker hose.

But it's still gonna be ~450 lbs plus the drum weight, so I wonder if that would drop the van the full inch.

Another observation is that garages may be a bit conservative in their clearances, maybe assuming the worst clearance would be when the van is centered on the beginning of an up ramp. Kind of like where I hit my head on flights of stairs. I would take a walk in that parking structure with a 1x2 that is 7' or so and see where where the clearances are actually less than 7'. I remember walking up a whole 5-story corkscrew ramp with my arm extended above my head, palm flat. I knew if that cleared, my Turtle Top van would clear....and it did clear. Before that, I parked in an outside lot when I drove the van to work; after that, I regularly parked 2 consecutive Turtle Tops in the structure, which I believe showed a max height that was less than my van was tall.

Alternatively, if you have a lower van now, get a styrofoam plank to make up the height diff between your current van and the Transit, tape it lengthwise on the roof, and drive thru any structure that you might want to use before you take the Transit up....

George

 

I haul wastewater from a tank wash every two weeks or so. We too looked up the weight of water and got the same figure. But in actuality it was around 8.83 lbs. The weight of the drum is nil, a steel drum weighs maybe 10-15 lbs.