Before you go messing about with the mechanics of the printer, you need to determine what is causing your head strikes. Most of the time it's not something wrong with the print head assembly, but with the vinyl and the temperatures and alignment.
You can adjust the head height easily (3 settings IIRC) within your material settings on the front of the printer. If it is still hitting then you either have a materials/heat/humidity issue (buckling) or a major mechanical issue.
We were having this problem for over a year, and on multiple different media. The head also was scraping the media guides, so that's not caused by the media. It printed fine for a year (i.e. while under warranty) on the lowest head height setting and then it started scraping the media. We changed to running on the middle setting, and it took care of most of the problem until about a year later when it started scraping the media again.
If the carriage truly is drooping down and needs to be fixed, you should probably bite the bullet and call Epson to have Decision One come out to fix it. Is it still under warranty?
Unfortunately, it's not under warranty. We've had the Epson tech out multiple times for a different problem and asked him about that. His initial response was to run it on the highest setting.

However, on his last visit, he tried adjusting the carriage. But in his attempts to make the adjustments, something fried the motherboard.
<sarcasm> So now it's fixed because if it can't print at all it doesn't scrape the vinyl, right?
</sarcasm>
Anyway, since we still have 2 working S80600's, if they start having problems it would be helpful to have a service manual.