They all work like that, oh, except that one particular version, which you happen to have.

You ever get the car where everyone says a certain repair or procedure works a certain way, except your car is the oddball?

The Miata our club got from Woody is kind of a rare car overall. NA Miata, 1.8, 5 speed, Torsen with ABS. Since it has ABS when I went to drop the front suspension the long bolt method doesn't really work on the driver side, because they relocated the washer bottle to behind the front fender to make room for the ABS and there is a bracket holding the piping that gets right in the way of where you would pull the bolt out. If it wasn't obvious, the "long bolt" method of removing the front shocks involves disconnecting the upper A-arm by pulling the long bolt that holds it up so that you can pull the shock/spring assembly down far enough to angle it out.

Can you take the bracket off?

On some of them, you also have to back off the sway bar bolts a bit to make room for that long bolt. IIRC you can pull that washer bottle pretty easily.

The only thing that's rare about that car is ABS, and that's not THAT rare. You just have to remember that most members of "everybody" have only ever worked on one car, so they assume they're all the same.

Yeah, the sway bar bolts are in the way on my NB.  Long 3/8" extension for the socket works nicely to push the long bolt out.

Keith Tanner said:

On some of them, you also have to back off the sway bar bolts a bit to make room for that long bolt. IIRC you can pull that washer bottle pretty easily.

The only thing that's rare about that car is ABS, and that's not THAT rare. You just have to remember that most members of "everybody" have only ever worked on one car, so they assume they're all the same.

It's more the bracket holding the lines that go to the bottle that get in the way. The bracket has a couple of bolts on it you can see in the wheel well area, but when I remove those there is still more up top holding it on and I gave up on it. I got around the issue by pulling the bolt holding the lower ball joint on which gave me just enough room to get the thing out, though with the stock springs this is a really tight fit and putting the bolt back in for the lower ball joint is kind of a pain in the ass.

I guess they did have ABS from 1991 on. I've seen a fair number of NA Miatas seeing as I've autocrossed for over ten years now and most of them with the hood open at one point or another and don't recall ever seeing an ABS NA, but then again I was probably not looking. Thing is whenever I searched for how to remove the shocks no one had any caveat on there for this problem. Maybe I just did it wrong.

Another option on an NA is to pop the upper ball joint. Easier to reassemble than the lower. Doesn't work on the NB so I usually don't mention it because inevitably someone misses the disclaimer, but it was our go-to technique back when all Miatas had popups.

I'll take a look at that, because we are putting GC sleeves over the Konis that are on there this weekend and removing the stock springs so once again I will have to pull it apart.

I'm not sure why but the car is actually a little lower than it should be I think. The guys put the Koni spring perch down to the R package perch and it was basically slammed, so I took it back up to the normal one and it's still pretty low.

Slipped upper mounts will drop the car. There's a picture here: https://www.flyinmiata.com/na-upper-shock-mounts.html

I'll take a look when we pull them. It won't be a problem after we put the GC stuff in, but would be good to know if the uppers are bad.

If it helps, I know that I had removed that washer bottle at one point. It's tight under there for sure though.

I miss that car, but my wife was really, really pissed at me for buying it. Probably still is. I should have kept it.

Woody said:

If it helps, I know that I had removed that washer bottle at one point. It's tight under there for sure though.

I miss that car, but my wife was really, really pissed at me for buying it. Probably still is. I should have kept it.

Well, we've made it worse since you had it. I remember seeing that engine bay was so pristine. Not so much anymore. It's not that bad actually, but even just the patina on the valve covers, it had none prior to us getting it.

I'm trying not to let anyone make it really bad, but the GC sleeves are kinda necessary as those stock springs are like sponges and aligning the thing for autox without having the height adjustment is not as good.

In reply to Harvey :

Send me a picture of it sometime. I'd like to see how it's doing. I actually follow FCSCC but they don't post many photos.

I just went back and looked at my notes. I used the "long bolt" method successfully on this car, though the driver's side took an hour and a half, while the passenger's side was done in 15 minutes.

Yes, I see how you removed that bracket, that’s the key to getting the bolt out. That’s probably still easier than doing what I did with the lower ball joint. I will probably either try that or popping off the upper ball joint like Keith suggested.

I’ll get some pics of the car this weekend. We do post pics on our Facebook feed. Usually someone is taking them. I should probably make up a gallery for the website and link to pics on there as well. I’m actually the one that runs fcscc.com.

Got some pics for you Woody.

Putting the Ground Control sleeves on the car.

All buttoned up and with new stickers. The gold looks nice. Send us some FM stickers Keith and we will put them on since she has the FM sways on her.

Getting ready for one of many runs today.
 

The eventual champion with the car and trophy.

She did very well at this event, though she is still too low all around for the spring rates we have on her as we still had issues with it bottoming out and the tires hitting the fenders. I'm kind of surprised actually since the front rates are 425lbs and the rears are 250. We measured about 5" from the pinch welds to the ground with a 180lb person in the car, but at the same time the front still seems very low. I do think the top hats seem like they might be a bit used up, but at the same time I'm kind of puzzled as I wasn't clear on whether they would compress more during use.

That's why our upper mounts exist - these cars are limited in rear travel. What's your ride height, center of wheel to top of fender opening? Pinch weld numbers will be affected by things such as, oh, a set of 16" wheels and slightly overtall tires.

Keith Tanner said: oh, a set of 16" wheels and slightly overtall tires.

Thinking the same thing...

Keith Tanner said:

That's why our upper mounts exist - these cars are limited in rear travel. What's your ride height, center of wheel to top of fender opening? Pinch weld numbers will be affected by things such as, oh, a set of 16" wheels and slightly overtall tires.

It doesn’t hit on the rear, it hits on the front. We downsized the tire height to match the wheels. I was pretty tired yesterday when I made that post, but it occurred to me last night right before I went to sleep that your point about the upper mounts being squashed is likely the issue. 

Unfortunately we didn’t have new upper mounts when we put the GC sleeves on and for some reason even though we had three guys there the logic of where we should measure ride height escaped us all.

So, anyway, will order new uppers and measure from the wheel center to fender.

Woody said:

I miss that car, but my wife was really, really pissed at me for buying it. Probably still is. I should have kept it.

Yea, if you are going to have to do hard time, at least make it worthwhile.