Blew out another damper.
Either need to raise the car (never!), sell the car (probably), or move (probably not).
Ugh.
Time to start looking for 128i's... unless they have no travel when lowered also.
Blew out another damper.
Either need to raise the car (never!), sell the car (probably), or move (probably not).
Ugh.
Time to start looking for 128i's... unless they have no travel when lowered also.
You wer warned. FM has suspension parts and recommendations to avoid that problem. You've chosen to ignore this, why make the car suffer for it?
Sounds like a job for digressive shocks:
http://www.fortuneautosuperstore.com/fortune-auto-500-series-coilovers-for-mazda-miata-mx-5-na-nb/
Stefan (Not Bruce) wrote: You wer warned. FM has suspension parts and recommendations to avoid that problem. You've chosen to ignore this, why make the car suffer for it?
Seriously? No, this is just poor design and engineering by Mazda. A sports car with fenderwell gap? That's a MAJOR design flaw.
If the engineers had done their job instead of designing a car that would take in to account all the things you pansies are worried about, such things as driveway angle, speed bumps, and crappy roads, this problem wouldn't exist.
Pfft....
GameboyRMH wrote: Sounds like a job for digressive shocks: http://www.fortuneautosuperstore.com/fortune-auto-500-series-coilovers-for-mazda-miata-mx-5-na-nb/
I'd think the opposite... Digressive shocks with very little travel will just lead to slamming the bumpstops really easily on any bigger hit. If anything, you'd want something stiffer and maybe more progressive to better absorb the bumps with little travel and avoid running out of travel harshly.
You can either have a car, or sculpture. Life is chock full of compromise.
Streetwiseguy wrote: You can either have a car, or sculpture. Life is chock full of compromise.
QFT. I hate the coilovers on the Forte for this very reason... too little shock travel. But then again, they are meant to make a pedestrian grocery getter into a Corvette eating corner carver. They do pretty good. Can't say thatI'm not happy to be back on stock for the winter though. MUCH better ride.
Honestly, I don't think a car at full ride height would've survived - and being lower just made it worse. Bad spot in the road, on a corner, and I hit it.
Pot holes blew out he struts on my Focus, too, and they're not known for lack of travel.
btw, MG got it right - I might drop that front 1/2" and it'd sit perfect...
Tucson roads aren't bad. Y'all are spoiled. Inlaws live there... I've driven plenty of them. Come here to the salt belt with frost heaves and potholes that make your little meteor crater look cute. That's where it's at.
Time for an NC Miata. Sorry, MX-5.
Race car suspension is for the race track. Street car suspension is for the street. I learned this with my Porsche. And Koni's are expensive. And you replace them in pairs. Did i mention expensive. I did finally call Koni and they sell a rubber spacer thing that you put on the struts that keeps the valve body from crashing in to the bottom of the strut tube. Once installed I have not trashed anothe strut. It does however help to slow down and generally try to avoid potholes when ever possible.
And again race car suspension on the street will be broken by the standard road conditions around here. This I Unforchinitly why my car ended up being basically a track only car.
Bobzilla wrote: Tucson roads aren't bad. Y'all are spoiled. Inlaws live there... I've driven plenty of them. Come here to the salt belt with frost heaves and potholes that make your little meteor crater look cute. That's where it's at.
Depends on where. Marana and Oro Valley are actually pretty nice. Parts of Vail are nice. Anywhere county or city, forget about it.
I would wager that the street my daughter lives on is (was, until they patched some of the holes) the equal of any salt state - the holes were about 8" deep (some more) and ranged from 1 to 2 feet in size - looked like Aleppo. Now it just looks like a moon scape. Grant Road has horrible stretches. Going up Wilmot, which is not bad comparatively, the Miata got high sided one day because the pavement sinks in spots. Sunrise was horrible (and it's one of the ritzier parts of the county) before they did some really crappy work to it.
That said, I'm not where you live but I get around enough to know this isn't good. Hell, San Angelo Texas had better roads, and the only thing there is the base.
I have to get a photo of a "paved" road I happened on in the north side of Worcester MA last week. You can loose subcompacts in the ruts and holes. I am not kidding there is a section where it I only passable on one side. The other has a rut deeper than my car is tall.
It cracks me up to read about folks in the Southwest complaining about their roads. Spend some time on Michigan roads. Trust me, it'll give you some perspective...
FWIW, I run FM's inexpensive V-Maxx coilovers at pretty low ride heights and have bottomed the car once. On a paved road badly gullied by truck traffic with the right combination of bumps (many) and speed (lots). Other than some scraping on one of the chassis braces, no harm was done. I'll be raising the car a bit next spring.
For a short travel setup to work on the street, there's a few things to think about when piecing it together.
Make sure the springs are stiff enough: if they're not, you'll bottom out the travel too easily
Make sure the shocks are valved well for the springs: inadequate compression damping leads to blowing through travel too easily
Make sure the suspension is progressive at the end of its travel: this can be done with progressive springs or big, progressive bumpstops that engage with some travel left. The goal is that you shouldn't ever really feel the suspension hit the end of its travel or bottom out hard on the stops. Instead, it should be gently slowed down through the last bit of travel.
Make sure the bumpstops are controlling the full compression point: if the bumpstops are sized and placed correctly, the shocks should never bottom out their travel (they can get close, but there should always be a little bit left). I usually aim for about 1/2" of shock travel left-over at full compression after running over a big bump (checked with the ziptie on shock shaft method). Also make sure you're not hitting coil bind and that no other suspension parts are hitting anything or reaching the limits of their travel / range of motion.
Applying this theory to the front suspension on the Jeep (which only has about 2.5" of travel before reaching the bumpstops) make the difference between it riding like crap on large bumps as it violently slammed the bumpstops and bottomed out (when stock) versus being able to fly over a set of train tracks that sit 4 - 6" below road level (with a rounded bump on each side) at 50 and have it feel like a total non-event. Stock, it had mediocre shocks, soft 190 lb/in springs and small, stiff bumpstops. It now has much better shocks, 280 lb/in springs and bigger, softer more progressive bumpstops that start to engage about a 1/4" earlier than the stock ones (they're actually rear bumpstops from a 99 - 06 GM 1/2 ton pickup, they thread right onto the stock front bumpstop mounts on a ZJ or XJ).
rslifkin wrote:GameboyRMH wrote: Sounds like a job for digressive shocks: http://www.fortuneautosuperstore.com/fortune-auto-500-series-coilovers-for-mazda-miata-mx-5-na-nb/I'd think the opposite... Digressive shocks with very little travel will just lead to slamming the bumpstops really easily on any bigger hit. If anything, you'd want something stiffer and maybe more progressive to better absorb the bumps with little travel and avoid running out of travel harshly.
If bottoming out is the problem then you're right, but if he's not running out of travel and general harshness is wrecking the shocks, a digressive rate will help.
And +1 for progressive micro-cellular urethane bump stops.
Go faster and you'll skip over the rough spots in the road. 
OldGray320i wrote:Bobzilla wrote: Tucson roads aren't bad. Y'all are spoiled. Inlaws live there... I've driven plenty of them. Come here to the salt belt with frost heaves and potholes that make your little meteor crater look cute. That's where it's at.Depends on where. Marana and Oro Valley are actually pretty nice. Parts of Vail are nice. Anywhere county or city, forget about it. I would wager that the street my daughter lives on is (was, until they patched some of the holes) the equal of any salt state - the holes were about 8" deep (some more) and ranged from 1 to 2 feet in size - looked like Aleppo. Now it just looks like a moon scape. Grant Road has horrible stretches. Going up Wilmot, which is not bad comparatively, the Miata got high sided one day because the pavement sinks in spots. Sunrise was horrible (and it's one of the ritzier parts of the county) before they did some really crappy work to it. That said, I'm not where you live but I get around enough to know this isn't good. Hell, San Angelo Texas had better roads, and the only thing there is the base.
Been up sunrise. If that is what you call "bad" I laugh at you. Inlaws are in Oro Valley, B-I-L lived on the south end of town (has moved twice since we were last out) and while they were not pretty, they were nothing like the completely unpaved roads by me.
Ha, I used to live south of the boarder in Hermosillio and drive up to Tucson on weekends. You have no idea what a bad road looks like. Seriously I drove on dirt roads in Mexico better than many of the major roads in SE Michigan. If you're blowing out shocks on those roads there is something very wrong with either the set up or the parts. I never felt the need to lower my NA Miata, I guess I'm not cool enough.
Since somebody has to toss this option out:
If you want a suspension setup that'll hold up to even MI roads, I can put something together. Same with AZ.
In reply to Keith Tanner:
If I ever get another certainly, but I've got an old mans Miata now with a Stuttgart emblem on the nose. Cheaper than a good NA too.
Adrian_Thompson wrote: Ha, I used to live south of the boarder in Hermosillio and drive up to Tucson on weekends. You have no idea what a bad road looks like. Seriously I drove on dirt roads in Mexico better than many of the major roads in SE Michigan. If you're blowing out shocks on those roads there is something very wrong with either the set up or the parts. I never felt the need to lower my NA Miata, I guess I'm not cool enough.
+1.
Bobzilla wrote:OldGray320i wrote:Been up sunrise. If that is what you call "bad" I laugh at you.Bobzilla wrote: Tucson roads aren't bad. Y'all are spoiled. Inlaws live there... I've driven plenty of them. Come here to the salt belt with frost heaves and potholes that make your little meteor crater look cute. That's where it's at.Depends on where. Marana and Oro Valley are actually pretty nice. Parts of Vail are nice. Anywhere county or city, forget about it. I would wager that the street my daughter lives on is (was, until they patched some of the holes) the equal of any salt state - the holes were about 8" deep (some more) and ranged from 1 to 2 feet in size - looked like Aleppo. Now it just looks like a moon scape. Grant Road has horrible stretches. Going up Wilmot, which is not bad comparatively, the Miata got high sided one day because the pavement sinks in spots. Sunrise was horrible (and it's one of the ritzier parts of the county) before they did some really crappy work to it. That said, I'm not where you live but I get around enough to know this isn't good. Hell, San Angelo Texas had better roads, and the only thing there is the base.
I stand humbled then. 
3 years ago Sunrise was one of the nicest roads in Tucson. Two years ago it started getting a little rough (in the truest sense of the word "little", apparently... ), and last year I hit two potholes about a mile apart, on two different occasions, on both sides of the car. Struts replaced thereafter.
If that's a good road to y'all, may I never wind up in the great white north (well, that's usually Canada, and the trip up to Vancouver was flawless....).
Do you have the rear shock mounts that restore an inch of travel in the rear? ISC racing has (had?) some and FM does too.
You'll need to log in to post.
