How Not To Lower Your Car

A thread on StanceWorks — the popular forum for lowered and hellaflush cars — began with a proud 2001 Honda Civic owner showing off his trunk-rattling sound system and slammed car. Then forum members quickly discovered how he lowered the car. As you can see, it's the kind of horrific DIY engineering that makes you want to scream, "You're doing it wrong!"

The owner, who goes by the name smokenyall, begins by introducing his "project loud and low" with some videos of its massive sound system shaking the car with some trap rap.

okay well ill introduce myself im from northern cali my 01 civic ex has 278,XXX and climbing, original tranny and motor its all stock exterior wise except my volvo lip.

When smokenyall shows pictures of his new suspension modifications "for teh extra lows," StanceWorks forum members realize that they are dealing with someone who has no idea what he's doing. One person calls the Honda owner a ricer, which clearly hurts the owner's feelings, but it is forum member OpelWagenGT who steps in as the voice of reason.


I think regardless of whether or not you are a "ricer" that is definitely not the correct way to raise your strut towers. Nor is that method safe. Are you even using grade 8 bolts? The force of the suspension should be distributed into the shock tower not centralised on the three small bolt locations.

Smokenyall responds that his bolts are fine and there's even a plate to distribute the force from the suspension. After pointing out that the plate is attached with a rusted bolts, OpelWagenGT steps in with an extremely helpful diagram.

How Not To Lower Your Car

I drew up something is MS paint real quick to attemp to show you why your setup is dangerous, because apparently you don't understand.

At this point I don't think anyone is going to change your mind but we just want you to know that what you're doing is not safe so you can't complain if the system fails.

How Not To Lower Your Car

Smokenyall seems to take this to heart and ends up declaring that he is going to replace the bolts with spacers, as if that will solve the whole problem. This is when the thread starts getting new visitors and people lose their temper. User cobrawannabe begins the mandatory internet hate fest.

Put down the f***ing weed when you come up with car "modifications". This is f***ing offensive. Dude, I'm never harsh or rude on S/W because I feel my car needs a lot of work before I have license to be; but COME ON. This is an absolute joke, and a danger to everyone in your car. You are the epitome of "stupid Honda kid". I really respect a lot of the Honda scene, there are some guys out there really setting the bar.

Smokenyall is still open to advice, asking how he can make his "top hats" safer and responding to the growing number of demands that he never work on cars again:

Thats never going to happen. okay what would you guys suggest to make my top hats "safer". I already have had spacers cut to replace the nuts that were being used as spacers, and im waiting for them to arrive to my house. Should i flip my bolts over and have the heads welded to the bottom plate how obk did or how the hotchkis plates came. btw if you guys didnt notice obk is using one nut per bolt as a spacer on top of the hotchkis spacers.

User 325irollin explains why even when he goes looking for help, he's being a complete idiot.

how about you just buy some fucking coilovers and get a shop to install them for you the proper way since you obviously suck at being a mechanic.

At this point, all semblance of helpfulness disappears from the threat, smokenyall disappears, new visitors start showing up, and any hope for civil discussion disappears with the first posted image macro. Aside from people just laughing at smokenyall's Civic, one post sums things up pretty clearly:


As the StanceWorks forum members predicted, the thread is now going viral, and check out this thread at vwvortex to see this Civic owner get more unhelpful, completely deserved ridicule.

Hat Tip to: snapundersteer!)

Photo Credit: smokenyall, stanceworks (lead image); OpelWagenGT (diagram)