Lifted Winter Answer

This summer, I ran across a rusty 1996 Miata. The price was right, plus it had a hardtop and a torsen diff. I figured I could keep the top, swap the diff, and move it along. Or part it out. It had one long-term owner for most of its life, and after a few miles, I realized it was nice enough to keep despite its Michigan-induced rust. My son Jack is in college and has a Miata daily driver/autocross car that didn't need to see any more winters up here. So we came to the conclusion that we had the perfect answer for his winter car: Lifted Miata.

I'm probably doing this build thread wrong by jumping to the end in the first picture, so here is where we started:

We added a Paco Motorsports 3" lift kit from Flyin' Miata:

Jack is an E30 guy too, and someone gave him a set of steel 14' BMW E30 wheels that we thought would look just right on this car paired with some larger winter tires. We went with 205/75R14 Firestone Winterforce tires--about $50 each from Tirerack.com.

The tires gave us about 2" more height, so combined with the lift kit, he's driving a Miata that is 5" higher than stock.

We've driven Miatas in the winter before, but this one showed us that with a little more work, these things can be the Winter Answer too.

If you guys are interested, we'd be glad to share some more detailed pictures of the installation.

How is acceleration, braking, and turning with the bigger heavier tires?

I have a friend that may be getting rid of a rusted miata soon and this looks like fun.

I'd actually love to see some installation pictures. Did you run into any issues during installation?

My kit has been sitting in the garage a while now, hoping early spring for installation.

Just read some of the reviews of the part on Flyin' Miata that mention rubbing and/or clearance issues.

You run into any of those problems?

Regarding the wheels/tires, the stock ones were 28 pounds each and the winter ones were 40, so we went up 12 pounds/corner. Regarding acceleration, the butt-dyno can maybe feel the additional weight, but it doesn't seem too bad (it's a 1.8 car so that helps). We'll probably perform some actual measurements sooner or later. Regarding brakes, we didn't feel any real difference. We switched to StopTech pads soon after the swap and they felt much better than the cheap pads that were on the car. Again, no actual measurements though, so who knows for sure. The butt dyno can be deceiving.

Turning feels good. We did have to realign as the lift introduced positive camber and a toe change (must be some bump steer in Miatas). We'll put alignment details in a future post.

We did have slight rubbing, so we trimmed at the front of the wheel openings front and rear. No big deal on the rear on this car since it was so rusty anyway. In the front, the bumper had enough damage that we didn't care about cutting it, either. The BMW wheels we used have a different offset than the stock Miata wheels, so that probably contributed to the need to cut.

All of the rusty miatas in the north east have just been given a reason to keep winter fun again.

I daily drive my Lifted Miata. I need to make some alignment tweaks and probably the extended lower ball joints to remove the positive camber.

Here are some of the installation details.

The front struts were junk so we bought some KYB replacements from RockAuto for about $50 each and installed them.

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Then it was just a matter of installing the lift adapter in the lower A-arm and putting it back together.

With stock struts, we usually can "cheat" the strut back in by leaving the compressor on the spring and getting it back into position without popping the lower ball joint. That wouldn't work with the lift kit, so we did have to pop the lower ball joint, put the strut in, then put it back together. Nonetheless, it was very straightforward.

Finally getting back with some more installation details. Getting the rear lift adapters in the rear control arms was no big deal--unbolt the lower shock and put them in.

It was a big deal, however, to put the shock back in. The instructions show the job being done with coilovers, which would be easier to be sure. We just couldn't get the control arm low enough to get the bolt to line up. It may be because our alignment bolts and bushings are very seized from their years in Michigan snow and salt. We've since freed them up with a lot of PB-blaster, but when we installed the lift kit, they wouldn't budge. Even with a long lever and a spring compressor didn't get us to a point where we could get the lower bolt back in.

We finally unbolted the who subframe and dropped it couple of inches. Forgot to take pictures of that step. That ended up being a piece of cake and we buttoned things up.

Notice the liberal grease on the bolt. We've learned up here that wire wheeling nuts and bolts, then greasing them heavily, usually makes them come apart like butter next time.

Thought I'd add this picture of the lifted car next to Jack's stock Miata that he runs in ES.

How is this all holding up long term? I have a '91 (Michigan car) and I'm concerned about the chassis adjustment bolts if I install this kit.
I'm thinking it might be easier to drop the entire rear subframe and replace a bunch of the chassis bolts. Dropping it as a whole might make it easier to cut all the old stuff out (might!).

This kit doesn't put any unusual loads on the chassis bolts. Ideally, you should loosen all the control arm/bushing bolts when you install it and you won't run into the problem that Carl did when he was fighting the bushings. Pre-existing rust is never going to help of course.

They make lift kits for these? thats aweome!

Personally, I'd be running the alloys over the steel wheels. Less weight and they tend to take side loads better. either way it's still cool as hell.

fidelity101 wrote: They make lift kits for these? thats aweome!

Right.
I didn't know I needed one until I saw this build thread. For the kit & some 14" tires it could be done for $500 ish, which is silly cheap for the awesomeness.

I'm amazed to see stock miatas with hardtops and studded tires commuting around here in the winter. Most are stock ride height and just have the front end absolutely packed with snow.

Like Keith said, I'm not worried about the stress on the alignment bolts. The big stresses go through the damper/spring bolts (unless you hit something!). We've dealt with a lot of rusty Miatas up here in Michigan and we find that if we really soak the alignment bolts with our favorite penetrant (we prefer PB-Blaster, but absolutely hate the smell) and wait a few weeks, we can get them free. For this build, we were in a hurry and didn't have that waiting period. They did eventually come free though, and this must be one of the rustiest Miatas in the world.

Regarding dropping the subframe, we've had some Miatas that needed a lot of heat (penetrant isn't always enough) to get some of the subframe bolts freed up. We got lucky on this one somehow. They came out pretty freely. You'll actually see a story in GRM soon about dealing with those rusty subframe bolts on another Miata.

By the way, this Miata has been parked for the summer. If you've looked at Jack's build thread on his $100 supercharger, you might have noticed his mention of $150 Miata turbo kit he bought on craigslist. It's a cobbled set of ebay pieces that were on a dune buggy with a Miata engine, but the price was right and low-buck challenges are always fun. Don't know if we'll have time before the snow flies but we've been thinking about whether this car needs a cheap snail before it comes out for winter.

Perhaps an odd idea- what do you think about the difficulty swapping the parts in and out?

Not that I really saw a massive need here in SE MI for snow clearance, but something to consider.

(Our long term plans have my '99 Miata being one of our two main drivers after retirement. Just wish I could sell the GTV race car)

We've swapped the kit in and out on one of our cars. The biggest hassle is the fact that you really SHOULD realign the car, but if you mark the cams with "high" and "low" settings you can probably duplicate it pretty easily. With the bushings loosened, it's a pretty quick swap.

I run my turbo NA in the winter here. I was going to try the lift kit last year, but ended up testing to see how tall the Fox suspension could go instead.

We get 100+ inches of snow quite often in the winter (lots of lake effect) and I've never had a 4WD or lifted vehicle until this Miata. It's all about the tires. I used to drive an R50 Mini in the winter. It would barely move with all-seasons, but when I switched to Blizzaks on all four wheels it was unstoppable. It would plow like crazy and the grille would be packed. Same thing with a Miata. Before the lifted car, Jack drove his NA on four Winterforce tires on BMW bottlecap wheels and it was just fine. The lift just makes it more fun and cartoon-like. But I like cartoons...

Quick update on the Miata:  Last winter didn't have as much snow as this winter so it wasn't a great test of the car.  We've had quite a bit more snow this winter and the car has been bulletproof.  It will sit for days in a college parking lot and get covered with snow, as well as plowed in, and it starts and moves just great.  The only issue is that wiper blades take a beating from getting frozen from sitting.  Anyway, here's a recent picture from when Jack stopped home:

Gotta lift the wiper arms when you get out so they don't freeze to the glass.  I thought that was common practice in MI.

I thought I had updated this more recently.  After Jack graduated from college, the Miata had one winter off (2019-20).  With my younger son, Chris, in college, we pressed it back into service starting last winter (2020-21).  And here's how it's looking for the winter of 2021-22.  Since the last update, we've replaced the battery and changed the oil a few times.  It needs rear shocks, but it doesn't bother Chris too much so we haven't changed them.  So it's been really reliable.

How are the snow manners?  I would imagine lightweight plus tires and clearance should be a really fun beast.