Swank Force One rolls custom 98A mounts that may as well be billet aluminum. You can hear the inside of the car rattling from 10 feet away from the car over the noise of the terrible exhaust note queefing away merrily.

The MSM and the current 95 both have/had Mazdacomps and i found them to be sloppy as **** and completely infuriating.

I'm sure a lot of it is personal preference, but they just feel stock to me, not a compliment.

Maybe i'm masochistic? I don't know, but i rage so hard at the driveline movement in the 95 i'm probably just going to do the 70D AWRs and some delrin diff mounts because at this point, i'd rather be miserable from vibrations in my car that's already loud as **** than feel the driveline wobble from Maine to California one more time.

 

+1 to everything that guy just said.

So PM me and we'll find out how tight you want that those ropes cinched down

 

If it means anything I'd stick with poly bushings in the diff too. It's never a good idea to mix duro throughout mounts in any car. It makes it a lot harder on the PPF brace when there is no play at the diff and the 70D AWR mounts are allowing SOME movement of the engine. This is why we offer them as an add-on and more than 50% of the customers who order take advantage of this - LINK

 

What is the durometer on the ES polly diff mounts anyway?

 

I believe 95D, but remember we're working with much more material than the engine mounts here - so that 95D is likely a very close match to the results from the 70D bushings found in the AWR mounts.

 

I guess I'm immune, I've been rocking these mounts for over 2 years now and I barely notice them any more (at least when I had a running car )

 

HOT TIP: car only ****** when running.

 

Good idea on the relocation of the fuel clamps, I also could not believe FM would do it they way they have it in the instructions. I am swapping in the 949 sport clutch this weekend and will be modifying my mounts to be like yours. I was going to weld a mounting tab in place, but drilling and tapping seems muche easier.

 

Another option is to use the frame rail bolts and bolt the bracket flat to the floor. I did it this way on the red car and it has survived numerous "offs." Lol. You do need to bend the lines just a bit for this though.

 

I considered welding but Gesso was pretty much out of gas so I figured this would work. There is about 1/4" of space under the frame rail that was perfect clearance for the bolt shank. Like I said in the post, I'm usually pretty impressed with the stuff from FM but this I did not like. That reminds me... next time I get under the car I need to put some loctite the bolts.

I considered that, but I didn't have a tubing bender and I didn't feel like man handling the lines. This looks like it should be fine, its certainly no worse than OEM.

 

Has anyone tried slipping in a standard (non-poly) bushing into the AWR brackets? Or would this just not end well?

 

I'm not aware of anyone who has tried it. I'd give it a shot if we could find one that would fit without drama.

 

Speaking of bushings... does anyone make a poly bushing for the NB steering rack? I'm wondering if I should swap the bushings when we depower the rack. Miataroadster has delrin, but that sounds excessive.

 

I honestly didn't know there was a difference in bushings between the two. Sad since the poly bushing in my rack rock.

 

I think you might run into a problem with this or AWR would have done it already. I think softer material might be fine if the bushing itself had thicker walls but being that it's so thin I could see this being problematic. I have a pretty good relationship with Energy Suspension and they are always up for some custom applications but again, I have my doubts about reliability.

 

Maybe something between 70 durometer and rubber?

Maybe we need to leave our panties behind and deal with some vibration?

 

I did this too, I had to massage the lines, but not actually bend them, and remove/reinstall one of the other brackets up near the firewall. Initially I had followed the instructions but didn't like the flying dutchman style of mounting.

On the subject of engine mounts, has anyone used one of the damper kits that attach between the shock tower and the engine hoist bracket in conjunction with either the AWR or the Mazdacomp ?

There are some JDM suppliers that sell a kit for a ridiculous sum (~$200+ ) but you can find knockoffs on the bay of fleas for about $40.

--Miq

P.S. subscribed here G, your build is headed in the same direction and the parts I'm collecting....

 

Yo Miq, you're in Tualatin Oregon? We have a pretty strong Miata group up here.

 

So some **** happened this weekend:


Blank slate


Tuuuuuubes!


Yeah, that's a problem. Good thing Gesso has a tig.


This is also an issue


I'll just add this here...


Its not big, but its looooooong.


Ok, maybe it is that big.


Brake line and heater hose clearance need to be addressed.


Its like some sort of UFO hovering in space...

I have an FM airbox, hushkit and turbo heatshield and ain't none of it gonna work with this beast. I need to seriously examine my thermal control stratagem going forward. I feel like maybe the DP needs to go visit the boys and girls at Swain along with the manifold. I'm absolutely going to need to build a heatshield for the brake parts.

I'm honestly disappointed about the direct contact with the heater hose and the power steering line. As you can see I've already removed my AC and I'm giving serious though to removing the PS as well. This makes me sad, because if I had just done that from the start, I could have had something low-mount like Soviet or Ryan_G

But hey! At least I know where I sit and what needs to be done moving forward.



Then this happened.


And I died a little more inside.

The engine and exhaust is now absolutely bone stock again. No, cancel that, it still has the Racing Beat Power Pulse single on it. Other than that, bone stock. I even pulled the squaretop and re-installed the stock intake manifold. I haven't had that exhaust manifold on the car since I bought it 6 years ago. The first thing I did was swap it with a NB2 unit and I've not driven on that thing since. Well let me tell you something.... the stock ECU uses WAY WAY WAY less timing down low compared to the MS3 and boy howdy can you feel it. The car is WAY down on power from what I'm used to. Stomping on the throttle does next to nothing. There is no pull whatsoever, no feeling of acceleration. In order to get any power out of this thing in its stock form, you really have to rev the **** off of it. With the 6 speed, 8lb flywheel and 4.1 its very easy to do, but its completely ineffective. Every time you get on the throttle its like yelling at a retarded child: you look like an ******* and it accomplishes nothing. I think I may actually put the stock muffler back on the car (if I can find it) simply so I don't draw as much attention to myself.

I went for a long drive to see if I threw a CEL and lo, nothing appears broken. The car STANK from all the copper anti-seize burning off because I used it on ALLTHEEXHAUSTTHINGS. My wife actually asked me at one point "Is it supposed to be on fire like that?"

I guess I can't complain too much. It was a lot of work, but its only a temporary situation.

 

Nice man, doin work. What a long sexy turbo you have.