Setting up my Miata

[Magooiii]

Completely. put them in without trimming. Front was barely touching rear was 3/4 inch short of touching.
Love it

[Loren]

I did that with "Fred" and also liked it. Glad it's working for you. Should make the car a lot more responsive and predictable when pressed.

[Magooiii]

So just a check in.

Ran the car in Dunnellon what a huge difference very predictable and smoother.

Brought car down to Joe’s garage had a great time there aligning the car however, we weren’t able to get much negative camber.

It was as follows

Started

Front 1.0 and .9 positive
Rear .1 and .1 negative

Ended up

Front and rear all 0.1 negative. Under visual quick inspection nothing bent but, I’m sure there is something up I’ll be digging into it further. Which leads me to the question can I use adjustable control arms as long as I stay stock height and no more the the -2.0 degrees in camber. The car need ball joints and bushings etc anyway would prefer to only change it all out at one time. Been reading the long bolt gets bent as well. I’ll pull that out and check it too.
Forgot to mention that it is front passenger that is the issue.

[Loren]

Is your Miata on the tall side? With fresh aftermarket shocks, it should be. (measure from the fender lip to the center of the hub, 14" or more is tall... I believe 13.5" is pretty typical stock...) The shocks are gas pressurized, which adds to the effective spring rate. New shocks vs. worn shocks can be 3/4" different in height.

The double wishbone suspension gains negative camber as it compresses. So, the taller it is, the less static negative camber you can get. But, what's important is the dynamic camber. What's the contact patch doing when you're at 0.9-1.1 G's in a turn?

The front of a Miata gains about a degree negative camber per inch of suspension travel. So, if you're at max height, you've got a good 4" of travel in the front, and something like 2.5" in the rear.

Did you do the alignment with your weight in the driver's seat? If so, you'd have more camber on the left side because it's going to sit slightly lower on the left.

Try to align the car in it's most-driven (or most autocrossed) condition. If you take most of your runs solo, then you want to align it with your weight in the driver's seat. I'd just slap everything max negative. Monkey with the Caster adjustment and rear toe adjustment, and massage it to max camber all around. (which is likely what Joe did) Then balance it... get the camber to within a tenth or two on each side. Decide what kind of "camber split" you want (vs what the car is capable of giving you)... more camber in the rear will make it more stable, less likely to oversteer. Same all around is a little more oversteery. More in the front gives you good front bite, and even more potential for oversteer. Once you've got the camber set all around where you want it (within what you can get), then tweak the caster and the rear toe. Those adjustmens will affect the camber, so you may need to readjust your camber a litle bit to even things out.

With power steering on your Miata, you can run as much caster as you can get, and you'll like it. But, optimize for max camber first. Take what caster you can get... but, at least 4-4.5 degrees. If you have manual steering, you might want to keep the caster closer to 3.5-4 degrees.

But, remember... dynamic camber is what's important. We're not hard parking, so static camber is only important as it relates to dynamic camber.

[jbrannon7]

What he left out is, just like Sally's car, the right front is camber limited, we were able to get -.9 from the driver's side and didn't even try to get more from the rear after finding the right front could only get -.1. I am pretty sure Ken and Sally both have bent lower front right control arms. Next time I find a good car I will take some measurements so I will be able to point out the bent ones.

[Magooiii]

What he left out is, just like Sally's car, the right front is camber limited, we were able to get -.9 from the driver's side and didn't even try to get more from the rear after finding the right front could only get -.1. I am pretty sure Ken and Sally both have bent lower front right control arms. Next time I find a good car I will take some measurements so I will be able to point out the bent ones.

Yes what he said

[twistedwankel]

Yeah. I've got to see Joe B. for some love one of these days when I return to S1 with a lowly RX8. (That was a bad idea for S1. C5's are way slower than RX8's with an alignment on a Mirage course.)

[Evil MS3]

Hey Ken, sorry to bump an old thread. I picked up the same Amazon bump stops as you and saw that you installed them without cutting them at all. I'm trying to determine if I should leave them as is or cut them.

On the rear, how much space from the bottom of the bump stop to the shock body did you have once everything was assembled?

Was this on stock shocks?

[Loren]

NA rear suspension is different from NB. Front is mostly the same, but still not exactly the same.

The NB has something like 3/4" more suspension travel in the rear. In short, this should mean that if you can run these bump stops uncut on the rear of an NA, you should have MORE space to do the same on an NB.

Bear in mind that if you have old shocks, they've probably lost some gas pressure. Gas pressure in a shock sort of acts like a spring. So, by losing that pressure, you've lost some pseudo-spring rate... and the car is sitting LOWER than it would on good shocks. (Many people have been disappointed to fit nice, new shocks on the old Miata that they bought and find that it raised their ride height by 1/2-3/4"!)

[Magooiii]

Yes new OEM style shocks. The rears were just barely had a bit of space the fronts had about 3/4 an inch of space.

BTW I don't DD my car so I like the immediate feel of them. Made a huge improvement. and I agree with Loren you can always go back and cut them.... but you won't LOL

[Evil MS3]

Thanks Ken. Got them installed on the rear. They feel good, but did these make you monster truck like this? Lol

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

[Magooiii]

Thanks Ken. Got them installed on the rear. They feel good, but did these make you monster truck like this? Lol

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

No not at all. I have an NA but my car is one of the lower sitting ones around.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Magooiii]

So while I’m updating....



Finally installed new lower control arm I have not checked camber to see if it fixed the issue on that side of the car yet. Also finally decided on shocks went with the bilsteins, and added the racing beat front bar.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[yamaha731]

This post has been really helpful. I looked at my bump stops on my 99 and there was less then a half inch of bump stop left in the front. Something I would have never thought about

[Jamie]

So while I’m updating....

Oooohhh…look at those shiny new parts....

[SlowMiataDrew]

The springs are so LONG! Never noticed before...

[Loren]

Mmm... Bilstein.

[CaptainSquirts]

Tested on the Nürburgring. James May would love those shocks!

[Magooiii]

Ok. So I installed the new lower control arm.... and no change in the available negative camber. Grrrr. I see nothing obvious bent or otherwise. Should I start with eccentric bolts. They looked ok when I changed out the arm but I did not check the for absolute straightness. Any ideas. Throw them out there. Is it possible my car just can’t get anymore with out adjustable arms or ball joints?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Magooiii]

So.....2 new ball joints and boom -2.0 camber in front -1.9 in rear. Test drive reveals what everyone said. Camber = mm,mm,mm, good. Looking forward to small tweaks for the season. Thanks everyone for you advice and guidance.