Got my Bilsteins for $250, ebay collars $50, and qa1 springs $120.

Total-$420

Revalve-$300

 

Did you have to machine your collars to fit the bilsteins? That's what prevented me from going that way.

 

I know its a Coner8 topic... but has anyone tested KSport?

 

I did the EXACT same thing...just haven't made it to the revalve.

Cheap effective setup...and I've already tried all the other OTS shocks and springs.


If you order the kit which comes with the aluminum upper spring isolater you can easily make a custom perch out of it which fits better, goes lower, and gets rid of the stock pieces.

I did it with both the Konis and now the Bilsteins (two different eBay kits). Involves two simple ID bores on a lathe...and works great without mangling shocks (set screws), perches or collars.

https://www.miataturbo.net/forum/t37149/

The ID of the set ring for the threaded collar is purposely 0.010 smaller than the OD of the collar for an interference fit. Once tapped in with a mallet it doesn't rotate during adjustment, or bounce up on the road.

Here is an example of the kit you need to look for:

90-97 Mazda Miata Sleeve Style Coilover Kit 330391:eBay Motors (item 400073509344 end time Jan-13-10 11:22:51 PST)

I've seen these with grey, red and now yellow coated springs. All the others have black plastic isolators which leave you SOL for fabbing a perch.

Installed:



those red shocks are really yellow as in Koni yellows.





To me these kits should be designed like this, but then you'd have to order for your specific shock...something GC will do, but our CDM friends won't.


I moved the 350lb/in springs up front and ordered QA1 250s for the rear with current setup. I had the out of the box 450/350 setup with the Konis and couldn't live with it daily. It was also pretty twitchy at the limit.

I'm also convinced the 7in QA1 springs handle road imperfections where droop is an issue much better than the 5.5in eBay junk. I definitely feel like the rear tires are always on the road and giving me good feedback now.

 

^frigging brilliant. THIS setup should be moved to a sticky section of the site.

 

How much did it cost to get lathed out? How did you know what specs to give the machine shop?

(if you work at a machine shop, how much /would/ it cost, and how would a person give specs to you? )

 

You dont have to lathe anything with bilsteins and ebay collars. I agree with the ebay spring being on the short side. I did have to grind off a tab on the silver msm bilsteins to clear the collar, 5 min with a harbor freight grinder.

 

I work in a shop and have no idea on cost since we aren't a job shop. I just used a set of calipers on shocks and threaded collars to come up with the measurements.

I tried to get a very close fit for the perch to shock, but ended up 2-3 thousandths over on each, and would like for it to be closer next time. I purposely bored the collar section 0.010 under the threaded collar OD for an interference fit since it's easy to deform the thread tops.


I HAD to do this on MY Bilsteins since they are NB models with the goofy open-end spring angled perches.

 

Take a pic so I can see what your talking about. Did you leave the original spring perch on?

 

It sounds to me like you both have NB Bilsteins, but have different eBay collars.

 

No...I took it off.

I have yet to take a picture. The car has sat there over the whole break besides my brother trashing it. I expected to get a lot more work done, but haven't even taken the wheels off due to work.

Apparently I wasn't the first one to do this though, it appears Rob did something similar:



I'm not sure if those are NA Billies or not though.


I'll try and get you a pic before I head back to school next week.

 

I splurged on the racelands, so far so good.