DeerHunter

When I made the decision to sell my beloved ’93 L.E., part of the reason was predicated on wanting a relatively stock car again. After 25 years of ownership and a liberal application of most of FM’s catalogue, I was ready for something a little less high-strung. The 30AE seemed to check all the boxes – essentially every option that Mazda offers, with an eye-catching colour scheme to boot. For all my good intentions, “stock” was a very short-lived state indeed. Besides getting the full paint correction/PPF/nanocoating treatment, I almost immediately added the following:

• Stubby antenna
• Verus air/oil separator
• ROADSTER badge, as used in the Japanese market (in lieu of 'MX-5')
• Custom 1989/3000 badge made in aluminum
• G-LOC brake pads, plus stainless steel-braided brake lines
• Gas-strut hood lift kit

In the car’s second month of existence (and on the way back from its maiden road trip, to Laguna Seca), we stopped off at Flyin’ Miata and I had a high-flow mid-pipe installed, along with Verus underbody panels and rear diffuser. Over that winter, I ordered custom leather shifter and parking brake boots, plus a gorgeous custom steering wheel from Guardian Design. I could go on but suffice to say that it ain’t so stock anymore. Oops!



Now, with the 2019 trip to Laguna Seca in mind, and hearing about the prodigious shortcomings of the stock Bilstein suspension, I had planned to make it one of my first modifications. The timing didn’t work out and I was forced to make the drive au natural. To my pleasant surprise, I quite liked it. Yes, the springs are very soft and the car heels over in corners like a water-skier cutting a wake, but the car takes a set very quickly and hangs on like a limpet. More importantly, I don’t really notice the body roll from the driver seat, although it’s readily apparent when viewed from the outside. Combine all that with state-of-the-art (for a small roadster) suspension design that soaks up big bumps without discombobulating the chassis, and the car is a complete delight on back roads. Driven smoothly, it holds its own on track too. Suddenly, a suspension change was put on the very rear-most back-burner.Then SuperMiata did something supremely unfair: They held a Black Friday sale, with their newly-updated ND XIDAs offered at a very tempting price. I’m only human and, in my defence, I do have experience with just how well their suspensions works (Heinz, my track-mostly MSM, sports XIDAs with extremely high spring rates, yet offers a more-than-acceptable ride on our bomb-cratered streets). Wanting to share the joy (or is that not wanting to suffer alone?), I roped our club president, Richard, into buying a set at the same time. Money changed hands and then it was the waiting game. It didn’t hurt too much, as my car was in winter hibernation for, well, the winter. Still, I did the dance of joy when we finally received our shipping notice in March.

Our kits were shipped to a mail-forwarding centre in Montana, and arrived here within a week or so. A fellow club member was kind enough to host our install day on a blowy, blustery Saturday (when you own a hoist, it seems you’re never lonely). Two other members, plus my brother, came by to lend Richard and me a helping hand, as well as provide an unending supply of acerbic comments and bad jokes.

Installation:
Everything fit in my trunk, including my Eastwood fender roller (our host was hoping to add a little clearance for the rear tires on his NC). Note how well-packaged the XIDAs are:



First thing to do is measure your ride height, which you’ll need as a baseline when determining where things will sit post-installation. The traditional method is to measure from the center of the hub to the mid-point of the fender. This is not recommended by SuperMiata since measurement errors can be introduced (you have to eyeball the hub center-point, as well as the perceived center of the fender). A much more precise method is to measure from your pinch-welds (the part you use as a jacking point). Here’s the illustration provided with the XIDA installation instructions:



The hoist sported an additional hydraulic jack that can raise one end of the car and allow removal of the wheels. Starting with the front, the factory procedure is to remove the ABS sensor from the hub, along with any support bolts holding the sensor or brake lines to the upper A-arm.




It’s also a good idea to disconnect the anti-roll bar on one side, which will make it easier to push down on the lower A-arm for the required clearance. Finally, the upper A-arm is disconnected on the chassis side, allowing for the necessary access.




With the upper and lower shock bolts removed, a bit of downward pressure on the suspension will permit the stock shock will slide right out. Watch that fender.




Since we didn’t order the optional billet coaxial mounts, it’s necessary to reuse the OEM top hats from the Bilstein shocks. The springs are under considerable pressure, so a set of spring compressors are an absolute must. Once you remove the top nut, the top hat assembly will easily come apart. You’ll be left with bumpstop, rubber bushing, large washer and a metal sleeve. The top hat will require any OEM parts to be removed, with the exception of the top-mounted plastic anti-squeak gasket (it’s easy to misplace this transparent piece, so put it somewhere safe). Give everything a good clean.




Remove the XIDA shock assembly from the bubble wrap and, for ***** ‘n’ giggles, lay old and new side-by-side for comparison.




Now it’s time for final assembly. There are no supplied instructions on how to mate the OEM top hat to the new shock, so we had to muddle through on our own. I think (hope) that we got it right. First, remove the two nuts on the XIDA, followed by the large washer and rubber bushing/bumpstop (this last part, annoyingly, has to be threaded off by hand, and the center shaft uses a very fine thread indeed). Note that there is a second bushing/bumpstop under the cardboard protector that remains in place.




The OEM top hat is installed, add back the top bushing/bumpstop, the supplied large washer and then the nuts. One warning I had gleaned by watching a SuperMiata video on YouTube is to never overtorque these nuts, as the adjuster shaft is hollow and will snap (which is absolutely guaranteed to ruin your day). Snug the lower nut, hold it steady with a thin wrench (luckily, our host had a bicycle wrench that worked perfectly), then torque the upper locking nut to “goodantight”.





Et voila! Before installing the new shock assembly, you’ll want to figure out a good starting point for the lower spring perch, as doing the rough adjustment in situ is much more difficult and tedious. Once my final ride height was set, measuring from the bottom off the perch to the top of the bottom locking collar (in other words, all the visible threads below the springs), my numbers were between 148 and 155 mm. A good starting point is around 150 mm.




The perch is locked in place with a set screw and can be adjusted by rotating with a 5 mm hex key inserted into the evenly-spaced holes.




Assembly, as the saying goes, is merely the reverse of disassembly. Remember to watch that fender.



Note that you’ll need to make sure that the two ends of the A-arm are in proper position before slipping the shock into the top holes, as they otherwise won’t have space to fit into place and you’ll have to remove and try again. It’s also a good idea to remove the orange anodized adjuster at the top, to prevent inadvertently scratching it (ask me how I know).




All in. Don’t do more than snug up the suspension bolts, as they have to be torqued with the suspension at the final ride height (the top bolts can be done at any time). Note the easy shock adjuster access afforded by the Good-Win V2 shock-tower brace.




Comparing a rear shock to a front, you’ll note how much more travel there is in the back, something that Mazda engineers fixed in the NC and ND to rectify the dearth of suspension travel in the earlier cars. SuperMiata took great pains to make sure that their shocks didn’t lose any of this essential (to both performance and ride comfort) feature.



Both ends exhibit oodles of droop travel.



Helper springs ensure that the main springs don’t become detached from their perches at full droop. At normal ride height, they are completely compressed and have no effect on spring rate.



Now that both fronts are in, it’s time to change ends.




Trim pieces have to be removed from the trunk (along with a metal shield on the driver side) in order to reach the nuts holding the top of the rear shocks. The furthest nut has very tight access but a ratcheting wrench can be slipped over to make removal and replacement a tolerable experience. As with the fronts, you need to reuse the OEM top hats. Shock assembly is essentially the same.




In with the new. Do I have to remind you to watch the fender? A large prybar is useful to depress the suspension so as to provide clearance for shock removal and reinstallation. Once again, do no not do any more than snug the lower bolts until the car is at its final ride height (although it’s perfectly fine to torque the shock-tower nuts at this time).

DeerHunter

Now comes the fun (sarcasm alert) part – setting your ride height. Refer to your initial measurements and then calculate how much you want to drop the car (a ¾ to 1” reduction will eliminate that OEM 4x4 look). Richard and I puzzled over how his car measured higher than mine and attributed it to car-to-car variation (later on we remembered that he has slightly over-size tires with full tread depth, while mine are still the original set, essentially at the wear bars). You want the car to be either the same front-to-rear or with slight rake (rear about 4-7 mm higher than front). It’s a tedious process, as changing one corner effects its diagonal opposite. Also, as this is done with weight on the suspension, turning the collar becomes more difficult (remember to use that 5 mm hex wrench for leverage). I ended up around the 120 mm mark (plus or minus), measured at the pinch-welds. This will be fine-tuned when the car is corner-weighted.

Access to the front perches is maximized by turning the wheels. Jack up the corner you’re adjusting, measure the perch height to get it close to your required setting, drop the car, roll it back and forth and bounce the car (to try and overcome stiction in the suspension), measure, repeat as necessary. Make plenty of notes as you go along. Before final measurement, it’s a good idea to take the car for a short drive to get it to settle as much as possible. Once happy with the results, and with the full weight of the car on the suspension, torque all bolts to spec.





We had Richard’s car on the hoist by 9:30 am and finished at around 2 pm. Mine went on after lunch (2:45 pm) and we were done before 5. As with most car-related projects, once we knew what we were doing, things moved along at a much more rapid clip. Many hands also make for light work, as people could now work on tasks separately (e.g. one or two people could remove a shock from the car while the other two could swap components from a Bilstein to the XIDA).

Here's a comparison photo of Richard’s completed installation compared to my still-stock car. My finished car is in the second photo. I think we were pretty pleased with our day’s work.




The Drive Home:

As mentioned, it was a cold, blustery day with snow in the offing. The drive home was with the top up and I was expecting to be impressed. The thing is, I wasn’t. The ride was a little brittle – it wasn’t harsh, per se, but it was certainly firmer than I was hoping for. It was also still susceptible to porpoising on the concrete sections of the Anthony Henday. I puzzled over the matter for most of the drive and, about ten minutes before arriving, I thought of a possible cause. Once home, I referred to the installation instructions and realized that I’d misread the directions. They indicated to put the initial setting at about 2 clicks from full-soft, then experiment from there. I had directed everyone to set things to full-clockwise, less two clicks. As it turns out, that’s two clicks from full-hard. D’oh!

I quickly made the required change, unloaded my trunk and went out for another drive. There’s a particularly bad stretch of road a few kilometres from my house and I immediately felt the difference. Small bumps and washboard surfaces essentially disappeared, while large undulations were attenuated nicely. The chassis was completely composed, no matter the surface. A nearby neighbourhood has a series of roundabouts and, despite the sandy, traction-limited roads and cold temps, I could feel that the car is now more eager to turn-in. Satisfied (and with no small measure of relief), I phoned Richard and let him know of my mistake.


Corner-weighting and Alignment:

I had pre-booked space at a local specialty shop and the proprietor (who’s also a fellow club member) was more than happy to put his skills to good use. As a very successful Spec Miata racer, he gets lots of practise setting up his car before each race. Finding the ideal 50/50 cross-weights is an iterative process: Get the ride heights in the general ball-park; check cross-weights; make small changes to each corner to get it closer to ideal; get the alignment close to where you want it; check cross-weights; make more small changes and keep repeating until perfect; finalize alignment. It took him five hours to get it right but get it right he did.




You can also see that he has a twisted sense of humour. Here is a picture of how he weighted my driver seat:



Perfect 50% cross-weights, near perfect front/rear balance at 50.5/49.5, and a total vehicle weight of 2,378 lbs (2,528 less 150 lbs in the driver’s seat). The alignment, based on SuperMiata’s suggestion, was spot-on as well:



Final pinch-weld heights are about 121 mm in the front and about 127 mm in the rear, enough to eliminate the OEM 4x4 stance while still allowing me to climb driveways and drive over speed bumps without scraping. I am very pleased indeed with how this part turned out.

DeerHunter

Final impressions:

As expected, my car tracks completely straight. What’s harder to describe is how it now feels. Maybe “expensive” comes close to a single-word description. The XIDAs, even on the touring spring rates, have more than doubled what came from the factory, yet still ride extremely well (note that I’ve purposely retained the stock anti-roll bars in order to preserve the best ride quality). “Plush” is maybe not the right term, as that implies a floatiness and disconnectedness from the road that is decidedly not the case here. You can feel road imperfections but they are not in the least harsh. Washboard surfaces are mostly filtered out and I find that I’m not slaloming between bad sections of pavement nearly as much as before. At certain times, dips in the road seem more pronounced as the rear wheels pass over them. The effect isn’t enough to confound the chassis but it is the one situation where the OEM shocks (or, perhaps, the higher OEM ride height) exhibit slightly more aplomb. Thankfully, porpoising on concrete freeways is greatly minimized.

There is no question, however, that my car is a better-handling beast now. Living in the back-road-bereft Prairies allows no easy opportunity to test the car in its native element (that will have to wait for the Okanagan Valley Miata Club’s Topless Sun Run trip this May), but you can easily tell that the ND is now punching above its weight class. Turn-in is more immediate and the back of the car now feels directly connected to the front (before, the copious body roll created a perceptible hesitation before the rear followed steering inputs). It’s more ‘all of a piece’ now and extremely reassuring.

It appears that shock valving is still oriented towards heavier, track-ready spring rates. I’m currently at two clicks from full-soft (the full range is about 20 clicks) and find that the most comfortable setting with the type of driving I can currently do. Three clicks is noticeably firmer without seeming to make body motions any more controlled. This might change once I’m able to drive a back road in anger – we’ll see. Still, that they can ride so well, lowered and with significantly higher spring rates, is a testament to great design and high-quality parts. To put it bluntly, XIDAs knock other mid-level aftermarket suspensions into a cocked hat.

I’d like to think that driving my or Richard’s car would give Dave Coleman what James May so eloquently described as “the fizz”. XIDAs put the ND on a level that Mazda might have been able to reach given a Porsche budget. To paraphrase that well-known philosopher, Ferris Bueller: They are so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking some up.

Chilicharger665

iTrader: (2)

Great write-up! I would say the only thing left would be some seat-lowering brackets for those sweet Recaros. I have some BBFW versions, if you are interested. I sold my last ND2 before I ever put them on and I think they would have been the ticket for the perfect driving position (5'10" and long torso).

DeerHunter

Appreciate the offer but the car fits me like a glove as it is. Being average in terms of height and proportion has its advantages.

DeerHunter

I just returned from a 5-day road trip to the interior of BC (Topless Sun Run 2022, hosted by the Okanagan Valley Miata Club). We travelled just under 3,000 km, on everything from high-speed freeways to high-speed rural twisties to tight-and-technical back roads. Weather ranged from bright and sunny to torrential downpours, and everything in-between. I wanted a baptism of fire to fully test the capabilities of the XIDAs and, boy, did I ever get it.

Where to start? Maybe with a single word: Wow! In my previous summary, I had described the new suspension as feeling ‘expensive’ and I’ll gladly restate it. The car has a solidity and cohesion that befits a model many times more expensive (think Porsche Boxster or BMW M3). The front and rear of the car are connected precisely now, with none of the mushiness inherent to the softly-sprung OEM setup. There is essentially no understeer, yet the rear-end is extremely well-behaved and predictable. Cornering limits are high, with absolutely no surprises if you hit a mid-corner bump. Steering is near-telepathic and one can easily adjust nose-attitude with the throttle (at a more-relaxed six or seven-tenths pace, it’s possible to one-pedal drive most roads). Broken pavement (and there was a lot of that) is absorbed effortlessly, which imparts loads of confidence to the driver. Finally, handling dynamics were completely consistent, whether on a low-traction, rain-soaked surface or high-grip, dry pavement.

After the initial mix-up with respect to full-soft/full-hard, and after the shocks broke-in (if that’s even a thing), I settled on 3 clicks from full-soft. Ride comfort around town was still stellar, and the extra click removed the last hint of floatiness. For the first part of the trip, I saw no reason to change things until, after falling behind the group while getting lunch, I had to do a banzai run on a particularly epic stretch of road in order to make the next ferry. At, um, extra-legal speeds and over particularly bumpy pavement, the car felt just a tad underdamped. Nothing that felt dangerous but it certainly wasn’t quite as rock-solid in those conditions. On the ferry (we made it by the skin of our teeth), I upped the damping to 4 clicks from full-soft, both front and rear. Later on, I tried 5 front/4 rear and then dialed it back to 4/4 again. This felt fine when driving hard but the ride quality, particularly around town, is a little flinty. Eventually I put it back to 3/3 and left it there for the rest of the trip. I suppose it’s for these situations that the ACE option was developed, or perhaps where the Sport spring rates would be more suitable. I’m not worried though, as that particular road (combined with the speed I was travelling) is a definite edge case. For 99% of my driving, this set-up is perfect for me.



I have driven many of the same roads in a 981 GT4 and, I can safely say, the Miata is now better. Sure, it’s not as fast out of a corner and it doesn’t sound nearly as good, but the Miata is a better dance partner on the best b-roads. It’s smaller, more tossable, more comfortable (particularly over small, sharp bumps) and easier to drive near the limit. The XIDAs are, by far, my favourite upgrade to the ND.

DeerHunter

Not particularly suspension-related, but you might be interested in my new wheels, which fix the OEM inset "wagon-wheel" look.

DeerHunter

I went for an extended ride in the passenger seat of an Audi RS3 on Tuesday. I'll preface things by saying that I love that car, in particular the bonkers 5-pot engine. It also sports magnetorheological shocks, which are supposed to adjust many time per second, and millisecond quick, in order to optimize both handling and comfort. My ride was also back-to-back with driving a fellow club member's 30AE, which sports the same Xida suspension (and same spring rates) as mine. To make a long story short, the comfort the Xidas offered over our rough pavement was significantly better, despite the almost-13" shorter wheelbase. Wow, the more I drive on the Xidas, the more I appreciate them for the epic achievement they are. I just wish I could make my car speak 1-2-4-5-3.

DeerHunter

Since I sold my track-mostly MSM last year, in order to free up funds to go endurance racing, HPDE driving days have been few and far between (although I still attend most in order to instruct new students). On Friday, I decided to take my 30AE out for a few light sessions, just to test the Xida suspension at or near the limits:



I was on my stock wheels and S001 tires, and brake pads were G-LOC GS-1 street compound (which meant my braking was very conservative).

Verdict: The car is a delight, with minimal body roll (despite Touring spring rates and stock anti-roll bars). Handling is playful but reassuring, although it will oversteer with too much trail-braking, as you can see at 3:10 in the video. Keep in mind that I was trying to push the limits, so this is not a characteristic that you're likely to experience on the street.

Non-suspension-related note: Man, I love the ND2 engine. Such a delight - smooth, rev-happy and with enough power to keep up with cars you wouldn't expect a Miata to have a chance with.

DeerHunter

I have some video taken from a 2021 track day (when I was still on the OEM Bilsteins) and thought it might be interesting to overlay the footage:

Chilicharger665

iTrader: (2)

Thanks for the vids! I really need to send in my first-gen ACEs and get them updated and revalved...