Exhaust question

[ratmonster]

My first question! How exciting!

Okay, maybe that was a touch dramatic. Anyways, I roll straight gangsta mack in my 1989 Bonneville LE. For an older car, she hasn't given me any real trouble yet, except some leaks around the front and rear windshields. But that is sorted for now, and I really like the car.

One thing that bothers me, though, is the placement of the exhaust. It seems to be where Pontiac intended, and seems to hang straight. But it is just situated so low. Has anybody else been bothered by this? Is there a solution, or does it have to be this way for safety reasons, I.e. otherwise it would blow up the gas tank or something? Can I safely resituate it higher? We drive on a lot of really bad roads around here and I am afraid we will eventually destroy it. Plus, it's ugly. Thanks!

[MattStrike]

I always thought the rear bumper skirt could come down a little lower to hide the exhaust. If you had a good shop, or the tools to DIY, you can adjust the low hanging around the tank area. But I wouldn't let it get closer than a 1" air gap without using header wrap and/or a heat shield.

[ratmonster]

I thought about header wrap as a possible ingredient to doing this.

[RJolly87]

If you turn the radio up a bit, you won't be able to hear it scraping on things.

For quite some time, the rear struts in the Park Avenue were not holding air, so when loaded, the rear end was often closer to the ground than it should have been, and scraped on EVERYTHING, even the road if there was enough people back there and we were bouncing around enough.

After having the struts replaced, it's better, but not by much. I still tag it pretty frequently on anything beyond 'normal'.

The front end is not much better. The subframe is too short to hang over curb stops, and the engine and transmission pan are at the same level if not slightly lower (already hit the transmission pan pretty good once).