Lachstock and Four Turbo Charged Cylinders ['04 NB SE]

[KevGoat]

Looks great with the new wheels, much nicer! Personally, from the before/after shots, I reckon the ride height looks just right. I commented elsewhere a while ago that I removed my old 15's due to the absolute necessity to lower the car for the smaller wheels to look right, interesting that even with yours already lowered you still felt it needed a bit more.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[Okibi]

Looks great

[ManiacLachy]

Big read below. TL/DR: I spend the long weekend installing upper arms with poly bushes w/ SADFab bearings and new springs in the shocks.

For a while now I have very very slowly been preparing to upgrade my control arms to Polyurethane bushings. You might remember some photos from earlier in this thread.

I bought spare control arms so I could prepare them for an easy(ier) swap.
I bought a ball joint press to assist with the removal of the stock rubber bushings.
I pressed out all the stock bushings, and the FUCA ball joint.
I had the control arms blasted and powdercoated.
I bought SADFab bronze bearing retrofit kit to eliminate the cons of poly bushings (binding, sticking, squeaking).
I bought Energy Suspension poly bushes, sent to SADFab to drill(lathe) out the FUCA bushes as needed by their kit.
I bought Bauer Extended Lower Ball Joints for greater negative camber on the front.
I bought a set of Moog ball joints for the FUCA - more on that later.
I bought R-Package tie rod ends to help reduce bump steer.
I bought new hardware (bolts, nuts, washers, camber bolts) for each arm.
I filled in the holes placed in the control arms by the factory - they're not in a place useful for zerks, and if not filled grease will escape.
I drilled, tapped and zerked my control arms.
I bought some heavier springs for my Xidas, 700/400 in/lbs to replace the 550/350s I got originally.

Finally, after over a year of planning and preparing, I was ready to begin!


RUCA, painted, hole filled and zerked

Over the Labour Day long weekend I pulled the upper control arms, and the shocks. The uppers and shocks are the most labour intensive, but also won't radically affect my alignment. I can replace these and continue to drive with the stock lower components.

The front uppers a major pain in the ass, not helped by Racing Beat sway bar re-enforcement blocks which needs to be removed in order to do the long bolt, or my intercooler piping which makes accessing the re-enforcement blocks quite difficult - who doesn't love un-threading a nut 1/8th turn at a time?


Empty front corner


Dirty front corner components

It turns out my Moog ball joints for the front upppers are useless to me. The NB's ball joint is longer than the NA's, and Moog doesn't make an NB ball joint. I had to re-use my stock upper arms. So I pushed out those bushes, drilled and tapped them, and fitted the bushings.


SADFab bronze bearing retrofit - the small pieces go in each end of a bushing, and the sleeve rotates within them. These replace the one piece sleeve commonly used in poly bushes, where the sleeve is meant to rotate within the poly, but ultimately sticks and binds

In the rear, it turns out that SADFab didn't quite get the measurements for the sleeves quite right, they were too long by about 0.75mm. Not much, right? But I couldn't get the arm into the subframe. I was stumped at first, but upon measuring the SADFab sleeves, the Energey Suspension sleeves, and the opening in the subframe the truth was apparent. I check all the remaining sleeves, but it was only the rear uppers that were off (both inner and outer, total of 3 per side).


There's not much in it, but the SADFab sleeve is too long to fit


Grinding down the sleeve

A trip out to my girlfriend's father's farm to make use of his belt grinder ensued. This wasn't too bad, the dog got to go for a run, and I also got my drill bits sharpened. But it took a good 4 hours out of my day.

At home, the rears now fit! The rear knuckle (the upper arm outer position) needed the stock bushing pressed out and to be drilled and tapped. The rear knuckle is thick. I turned my freshly sharpened bits blunt again, but got the job done.

Then to disassemble, clean and re-build the 4 coilovers. Before beginning I measured the pinch weld heights so I could reset my ride height back at the end, as well as the spring perch heights to give me a starting point.

And now re-assembly can begin! By this point it was probably Monday, time was running out, I didn't take many photos from this point. Between visits to my family, my girlfriend's family, friend's for dinner, friends stopping by, walking the dog, etc, time bled away quickly! I was a little stressed about getting to work on Tuesday, and pretty wrecked from rolling around under the car on my back for two days.

I got the control arms and shocks in. The upper ball joints took a little bit of trickery to seat, the thread kept spinning with the nut. Google tells me you need to "seat" the ball joint, so I put a trolley jack under the arm, then tapped the top of the joint with rubber mallet, and that worked! I got the swaybar bolted back up with the re-enforcement blocks.

And then I called it. I was out of time. I had other house stuff still to do, and I just wasn't going to be able to finish the fiddly bits in time, setting heights, etc. I was sooooo close. If a few things went a little easier, if the weekend was a little freer, I think I would have got it done. I called a friend and begged to borrow a car for the week.

During the week I got things torqued down. Replaced trim. Set my heights. Thursday night saw an initial test drive. My ABS isn't working *facepalm*. Other than that, it was a success.

This weekend I tried to fix my ABS, I inspected each sensor, lots of brake fillings on each, cleaned them off. I thought it was fixed, but the light is back on again now. Maybe a sensor busted? Brakes work, ABS doesn't.


Dirty ABS sensor vs clean

I'm driving around again now. Ride height is good. The ride is firm, not too harsh but certainly firm. I think I'm feeling mostly the spring rate change, as I still have the stock rubber in the lower arms, so it's too early to deliver a full verdict.

Tomorrow the car and the lower arms go to Accurate Suspension for installation and alignment.

[Magpie]

Was there much bind when you tightened everything up?

[ManiacLachy]

Was there much bind when you tightened everything up?

In the front, no, very free movement.

In the rear it was tighter, could move up and down, but not freely. The poly face touches against the subframe "ears", I expect it to wear down and clearance itself fairly quickly.

Note, this was done bolted up on the inner points with the outers unattached. If the outer was attached the lower arms would be contributing to the movement.

I might test it all again in a few weeks once the lower arms are installed and the alignment is completed, and it's had a chance to settle in.

[greenMachine]

Following with interest and anticipation

[Okibi]

Nice work!

[Daffy]

You crammed in a lot for just one weekend! That sort of effort would take me a month-

[SKYHI]

Never seen someone go to this much trouble with suspension arms and bushes, but I'm sure you've done your homework

[ManiacLachy]

You crammed in a lot for just one weekend! That sort of effort would take me a month-

That's why it took me over a year of preparation! And I only got the job half done

Never seen someone go to this much trouble with suspension arms and bushes, but I'm sure you've done your homework

None of it was strictly necessary, but the car is a hobby and I like working on it as much as driving it. Though, I'll never be particularly good at either one.

[Magpie]

What was the alignment settings?

[apsilon]

I had the control arms blasted and powdercoated.

Great, now that I've seen this idea I'll have to do it. I was just going to rattle can them but powder coating is so obvious a choice I'm not sure why I didn't think of it myself.

Great work and read. I doubt I'll get that much done in a weekend even with proper planning. Fortunately I don't have time constraints of needing the car through the week. Look forward to reading the rest

[ManiacLachy]

I got the car aligned yesterday by Ken at Accurate Suspension, as recommended by several others here on the forums. Ken is knowledgeable and has experience with MX-5s, does a lot of race and track car setups. He also installed the lower arms, tie rod ends and extended lower ball joints, all supplied with new hardware.

I was going to give him the Supermiata Dual Duty alignment specs, but forgot to print them out, so we went with Ken's recommendations given my usage. He wanted to go with about -1.8* up front and -2.0* in the rear, but with the ELBJs -2.0 was the minimum achievable, so we ended up with -2.0 all around. Max caster. Some toe in both front and back. Not sure of specific numbers as Ken doesn't provide a print out.

I'm not sure I love the alignment, to be honest. Steering is heavy and a little dull in the centre. The car does feel very stable though. I might get it re-visited in time. The Supermiata Dual Duty would call for a little more front camber to around -2.5*, zero toe, 3-4* caster.

As for the ride, it's definitely on the edge of where most people could tolerate a street car. It's not any noisier with the poly bushes, though I note most people with poly don't start getting noise until after some time has passed, so I'll report back, but hopefully with the bronze bearings this won't be an issue. But I can certainly better feel the road, vibration is up a little, the ride isn't exactly harsh, but it is very reactive. I'm sure part of this is down to the new spring rates, 700/500 lb/inch is equivalent to 12.5kg/7 kg/mm, these are recommended by 949/Supermiata for my setup but by most standards these are quite stiff. I'm going to play around with my damping settings to see if I can find a sweet spot.

Lastly, when I installed the Enkeis I started getting fender liner scraping, particularly easy to scrape in the front passenger well. While swapping the springs and arms, I installed the shocks without springs in the passenger front and rear, and fully compressed them to see where the wheel was travelling and what it might be contacting. In the front it's contacting the liner at the front upper point, there's a slight bulge in the liner. In the rear its contacting the liner just inside the SE "spats" at the upper rear, again the liner appears to bulge out a little.

I used to get this a while ago on my Racing Harts, but it went away with an alignment, as soon as the Enkeis went in it returned, the Enkeis sit out further so reaching spots the Racing Harts never did. It got a little better the few days I was driving on the new springs without the alignment, mostly due to the stiffer springs being harder to compress and reach the contact point. I hoped the alignment would again move the wheel's travel away from the contact point, but it's in fact worse in the front, contacting every time I come down a speed bump (and I do that slowly). I haven't heard the rears again yet. I suspect this is due to caster, putting the wheel's travel into the shallow part of the well.

Any thoughts on this? Anyone else with wider fitment and lower ride height have this issue? What did you do? I'm thinking of either temporarily removing the fender liner to see how it goes naked (I expect to hear far more pings and dings from rocks and road debris, or cutting them to make holes where contact is occurring.

[SKYHI]

What's the ride height like? Could you not just raise the car 5mm all round?

I've used Ken before for wheel alignments, and I know he has the experience, but I didn't like the fact that he seemed very vague when you asked him for what the settings were, and never provided a print out of the settings either. I really like to have a set of figures to use as a base for developing the car, especially on track.

[ManiacLachy]

Ride height is low, but not "slammed". I don't have exact measurements, I did my adjustments based off heights with wooden wheel ramps under the tyres so I could easily jack it up to make changes. I'll get proper measurements next time I visit Magpie and his laser guided level and weight pads

But, these coilovers are only spring pre-load adjustable, not shock length adjustable. Raising it would still allow the shock to compress to the point of contact, though it would take more effort. Might be worth doing though.