Help me diagnose “the lean”.

In reply to Hoondavan :

Not really, because that can also reflect a lean that is coming from somewhere else like the sways or bushings. So it can help eliminate some factors such as the "car shaped like a banana" problem, but it won't isolate the spring as a cause.

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

You'd be surprised at how much bushing preloading affects ride height in NC and ND Miatas. It's much less of a problem on the earlier cars. If the car's been dropped by an inch, you've effectively got a couple of dozen springs trying to lift it back up. We get this a lot when people buy our springs to lower their car, don't reset the bushings and then call us to find out why their car isn't as low as we said it would be...

And that's why I mentioned the shop I had do the work is quite familiar with miatas and racing in general. I also briefed them about the bulletin from Mazda that describes the twisted bushing issue. I as well crawled under the car (with two broken ribs mind you) and observed no twist in the bushings. 

When you say "Miatas", do you mean NA/NB or the later cars? Because (as you likely know), for a large number of people "Miata" means the first two generations and some of that knowledge doesn't always transfer. Racing in general doesn't mean anything in this case.

We get a very large number of calls from work done by shops that knew everything so they didn't bother to do their homework or read the instructions :)  So "done by an experenced shop" is no sign that it was done correctly when it comes to platform-specific details. And especially when there's flat rate work involved.

The bushings don't have a visible twist because it's only a few degrees. Resetting the bushings a relatively easy thing to do and the most common cause of incorrect ride heights in an NC following a spring change, so it's worth double-checking as the first step. Or at the very least, call up the shop and ask them if they reset ALL the bushings in the suspension.

You need to start with getting the springs seated properly and the bushings reset.  It's possible that it'll be worse with the LF spring properly seated but it's together wrong now so that needs to be fixed.  Once you have the basics fixed then you can look for a more esoteric issue.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Thanks Keith I'll do it myself from here out. The shop was recommended by Miata racers in the area, so no idea what actual in depth experience they have with this chassis.