x_25

Yeah, I am always amazed how noisy my NA is compared to my high miles rust bucket beater 99....

Scaxx

Well, I drove the car to work today, I've got a trackday with Aidan tomorrow that I slightly forgot about with bmw things.

Scaxx

Trackday went alright. Car is slower than I had hoped for and the shifting is ******* terrible. But it was pretty fun in the latter part of the day when I started getting more used to the car. Much different than the LS car or the e46 with an open diff lol. Brad was going to get parted out if it didn't do a 2:10 on the first day at the ridge, he just barely slipped by with a 2:09.55. So I guess I'll keep the car for now. Car originally came with a Kirkey and I need to throw it back in, I was having to hold myself centered with my arms since the car has stock seats and 3 points lol. That in itself would probably be a massive difference. I'll see if the videos are worth a **** and if so, I'll upload them. Nothing too exciting though.

EO2K

iTrader: (37)

Subscribed to this thread, because Brad is a little bitch (and I didn't know this thread existed before today)

I need more gross NA inspiration in my life

Scaxx

First thing. I've pretty much given up on tuning the car. I came to the conclusion that I just have too many projects and while I don't mind tinkering with the tune here and there, it's worth it to just pay someone. I reached out to Vlad and thankfully he had some space for me, so he'll be tuning the car. I really wish I had just reached out sooner, but at least I'll know the cold starts are good since it's in the 30s/40s regularly now! Onto the fun part!

Time to get a little more stupid in this thread. I've been talking a lot with @EO2K , and if anyone has terrible ideas, it's him. Brad previously had a paco kit on, and well, I'll just say I wasn't happy with it. Was it fun having a lifted miata? Absolutely! Some of the most fun I've had in the snow. But ******* hell, everything was so wrong. Now in their defense, they lifted it basically the minimum they could in the way that they did it, but it made things real ******* wonky. For one, it was lifting it waaaay too high. We'll go through measurements in a minute, but at full droop, it was forcing the suspension about 20mm (at the shock!) past where it wanted to go due to geometry or shocks hitting control arms. I noticed this when I first installed it and it took over 8 hours to do in combination with an 8 foot digging bar and 50lb hanging off the end in order to force the suspension down to where it needed to go.

Because the suspension was forced so far down and there was barely any droop, it rode like absolute trash. It also completely trashed bushings since it was pulling on them with the geometry being pushed into places it didn't want to go. This was all with stock suspension, which, at the time, the kit was advertised to work fine with. It quickly became obvious that they had never actually tested stock suspension. (I got this within a month or two of them releasing it).

Now that I've got a little more experience with stuffs and budget billies, I've decided to re-tackle this for the winter with hopefully some better results. We're gonna aim for about 60mm of droop at the wheel and base the lift height off of that. Before I really get into it, I apologize because I didn't do a good job of documenting these measurements with pictures. Due to that, this post is a bit more wordy than it is picture...y.

Starting off with the front, I put the shock in with the extension to see how far it could go. Ha! FUCA hit shock. Measuring shock length a couple mm before it contacts, we're sitting at about 23mm from where the shock is fully extended. So, taking that into account, I'm going to plan on a 25mm extended top hat and grind a little bit of the control arm to be extra careful and make sure bushing flex doesn't give any trouble. Because I'm only doing this for my own reference, I made a tape line on the front fender and this will be my reference point for all hub to fender measurements.




Putting the wheel on at the lowest point the suspension will be shock wise and taking a measurement from fender to hub, I ended up with 496mm. So then I jacked it up 60mm at the wheel from there, and that's (~435mm) gonna be the target ride height. From here, I basically just wanted to figure out if I'm gonna have any tire clearance problems at full bump. I'm using a 26" tall tire and it looks like I can stuff it all the way until the shock contacts the top hat with no bumpstop. Because QA1 doesn't advertise spring specs, I don't know when the springs will go solid, which would certainly help with bumpstop length. But for right now, I'll continue to be a millennial and not call them. Let's move to the rear instead!

Following the same basic idea on the rear, I removed the shock and put the paco spacer in to see where we'd land. Shock length was 383 and the car ran out of droop due to geometry at a shock length of 363 lol. Running the car with stock suspension last time completely fucked my bushings and this is why. To keep things simple and also due to axle worries since they're at a higher angle than stock, I'll make 25mm extended hats in the rear as well.

Putting the wheel back on and measuring, I came out with 502mm. For ride height, that puts it right at around 440mm, 5mm higher than the rear. Now, I'm not sure what this actually works out to as far as rake at the frame rail, but it gives a little bit of wiggle room and I'll likely take a little lift out to have it sit a touch more even front to back. Just like in the front, the wheel is able to be compressed all the way without hitting anything. Also like the front, this will change slightly since the extended tophats will allow the shock to travel a little higher, but at most it should be a roll on the rear fenders. Also similar to the front, I'm hoping that spring bind won't be an issue, but it's definitely something to look out for. Ride height for rear:


So the last step of this is confirming where springs go solid. Once that's done, I can start making new top hats and buying parts! We pulled my girlfriend's foxbody out of the shop to do some organizing, but once we're done with that I'll roll the miata in and get corner weights before putting the fox back in for funsies. Also lol at car with 26" tires and lowered.

EO2K

iTrader: (37)

That last pic, BEEFY!
Loving every minute of this, and I'm more than happy to encourage your poor decisions

I'm glad someone is actually going through and documenting this stuff. It's something I've been curious about and while more than a few people have done the Paco lift, nobody has really documented it. And I mean like, racecar build thread document it. People who actually care about their cars tend not to do things like this so you don't get that level of detail. It definitely seems to appeal to the "I have a trash Miata, lets do something dumb and send it" demographic and those are generally the people who don't care enough to make build threads. I'm glad you fall in the middle of that venn diagram and look forward to more stupidity. Keep up the good work sir!

Scaxx

Thanks! I'll try to do a better job with the pictures when things are actually being assembled. I was mainly just trying to get numbers so I could figure out what I wanted to buy while I was pulling it apart. It's currently back on the suspension as it sat before, since I want the car ready for whenever Vlad is good to go. I'm hoping to have everything all said and done before January which means I should probably buy sprangs and thangs this week

x_25

Ahahaha, you are ahead of me on this! Currently doing rust mitigation on my NB, but I have a set of DIY bilstiens and the poco lift sitting on the shelf (well, in the NB since it's on jack stands) ready for all the same measuring and figuring. Even have 26" tires ready to go.

HarryB

Block height of springs can be calculated easily. Measure the diameter of one coil, multiply by the number of coils, et voila!

Scaxx

Sure, but when you don't have the diameter of the coils, it makes it tough haha

Edit: I haven't bought the coils yet/qa1 doesn't post any specs. I'm like 95% sure it'll be fine, but it's always nice to know for sure. I'll just call them and hope one of the techs has the info before I order.

Midtenn

iTrader: (15)

hows the dampening with the lift blocks?

Scaxx

So moist

EO2K

iTrader: (37)

Buy springs, put springs in press, make squish, get tape measure. Done.

Scaxx

You forgot, "have HF press shift and release coil at high speed under 1000lb"

EO2K

iTrader: (37)

I mean, just don't do that part. Duh!

codrus

That's what zip ties are for, duh!

--Ian

Scaxx

Heh, nothing says safety like springs and zipties.

Looks like 10" springs it is. Gonna give 275 front and 175 rear a shot and see where we go from there. Worst case I suppose is that I need to add some springs to my collection. With the 10" springs, the perches will pretty much be at their lowest point to hit the target ride heights, but that should also give plenty of room for the spring to compress and not cause problems. I'll still call to verify.

I ordered an MR shifter on black Friday and I'm hoping to buy some engine mounts used from one of the Indy bois to try to fix the shifting problems. That's my update for the week, more updates to come next week!

x_25

I ran the numbers for my NB for max travel with reasonable droop. I never wrote down the results, but remember needing a 10" spring minimum for the rear and 8" minimum front for doing 325/225 so 10" probably won't be enough in the back. You will likely need 12 or even 14 (which are close to the stock spring lengths if I remember right). Don't forget to take into account the static weight on the springs is going to eat up a few inches of spring length.

From my NB info.Spring motion ratios measured for NB (2000): 0.686 / 0.721 (F/R)
Spring travel front: 4.116”

Spring Travel Rear: 5.047”


Corner weights for MSM
LF - 663 lbs

RF - 667 lbs

LR - 569 lbs

RR - 576 lbs

Use 660lb front or 620

Use 570lb rear or 530

962lb static load on front springs or 905

790lb static load on rear or 720

4.326” spring bump travel rear

3.43” spring bump travel front

Lets call it 4.75” rear and 3.75” front for safety

Scaxx

Hmm, from the numbers I had run last night it looked like 10" may be close to lifting it too high. The paco kit does change the motion ratio slightly on the front by moving the shock back, but I just did .66(2/3) because I don't have an exact amount that it moves it back ( I should probably measure that lol). I haven't taken corner weights on this car, but based off my previous stock NA, corner weights were more like low 500s in the front and rear. I'll post up my numbers when I get home, I don't remember them well enough off the top of my head

Stock spring rates were also like 165f/95r though, so they definitely needed to be on the long side.

x_25

And NBs are heavier, lol. Yeah, I am just betting a cheap 10" spring is going to end up close to coil bind in the back. Worst case, extend the bump stop a bit though. Curious to see how this all works out.