Great, I thought, I'll just pull the front shocks and pop those in! So one weekend, I threw the car up on stands and pulled the front shocks, only to find that the top nut to the shock is a jam-nut configuration where two nuts screw together to lock in place, and these nuts were very thin. Too thin to get a wrench on the bottom nut and turn the top nut. Apparently bikes have nuts like these and bike stores sell what is called a "cone spanner", essentially a very thin spanner. Thin is fine, I don't need to apply a ton of torque to these nuts, so the weaker strength of the wrench doesn't matter. I went to 5 bike stores looking for a 19mm cone spanner and no-one sold that size. I found 16mm, 18mm, 20mm, 21mm and more, but no 19mm. I had to put the shocks back in having accomplished nothing
I mentioned my woes in the "s#%ty things that happened this week" thread, and Pezchops so very kindly came to my rescue. That very day at work he ground down a spare 19mm spanner to 3mm thick and dropped it in my letter box before I got home!
That is quite frankly bloody amazing! I am extremely grateful to him. That's the kind of community we have here, and you don't see that anywhere else.So, I had Thursday and Friday off work last week, I had to do an airport pick up on Thursday which would wipe out half of my day, but figured this was my chance to get some work done, so I booked an alignment for Friday morning - I hadn't had the car aligned in over a year, not sice Automotive Plus had it done as part of my control arm replacements following my QR incident, and on Wednesday night I put the car up on stands to get an early start on Thursday morning.
I quickly pulled the front shocks and armed with my awesome new thin spanner, dismantled the first shock.
The Spanner of Grattiude in action
Front Xida disassembled - looks like I didn't take a good shot of this, even though I pulled them appart multiple times
Additional Bushing stacked
After all of this, I found I had a problem!
With the added bushing, the distance between the tophat and the spring perch was increased - duh! This meant that less preload was need to hold the spring captive, in fact, to hold the springs captive with almost no preload I had to wind the perch so far up as to only have a few mm left in reserve. It would be touch and go if there would be enough left to achieve my ride height! Of particular concern was the drivers side as it required a few mm extra preload to even the ride heights. 
Perch location needed to hold the springs captive with the additional bushing - not much margin for pre-load!
At this point I was really running out of time. I had work to do on the rears, and I had to have the car all set to roll the next morning to get to my alignment appointment. I didn't have time to test the shocks with the bushings only to find I didn't have enough threads and to redo all the work if I had to.
So I put off making a decision on the fronts and go to work on the rears.
I ordered some shock spacers from Flyin Miata. These are around 1/8 inch thick and are said to give 1/4 inch rise in ride height, they go between the chassis and the top hats, they just slide over the tophat screws. I wanted these because it would mean I could run less pre-load and maintain the same ride height. I would have used these in the front, but you can't use these and a shock tower brace, there simply isn't enough thread on the tophat screws to use both, and as the SE's brace is integrated with the catch-can I wasn't able to remove it at this point. At the very least in the rear it would mean I wouldn't need to fully bind the rear helper.
Spacer on top of the rear Xida
Thankfully, these were a simple install. Just lower the shocks to clear the chassis, remove the plastic gasket, slip on the spacers, then put the gasket back on top, and reinstall! Reduce pre-load on the spring and bingo bango bongo, done!
Well not actually. I had a theory.
They say when installing coilovers you should raise the control arm with a jack untill the weight of the conrer is completely held by the jack - the car will raise from that corner's jack stand, this simulates the cars resting position when on the ground, and then you tighten and torque all your bolts. This will reduce any binding of the bushings. When I've done this in the past, I've only done it to the bolts I loosened to remove and replace the shocks, I did not loosen and re-tighten any other bolts. Today I wanted to do all control arm bolts, even the camber bolts - I was getting an alignment in the morning so I didn't care if I messed up my settings. I loosened all the bolts, jacked the corner then torqued them all down again. The upper control arm inner bolts were noticeably tight, and the movement there seemed quite restricted before loosening.
Anyway, now the rears were done!
It was getting dark, and my garage is no place to work at night with only a single overhead florescent for light. So I made a decision, I would not run the extra bushing. If after the alignment I still had issues, I could either order longer main springs, or I could get a catch can from NitroDann, throwaway my shock tower brace and get another pair of FM spacers. I resembled the two front shocks once more, ready for a hasty install in the morning and called it a day.
Stay tuned for the epic conclusion!
