Monthly Archives: November 2015

Carbing permanent price drop

Carbing

To continue with our goal of becoming the #1 online source for high quality Miata parts, we’ve now updated ALL our prices for Carbing Product. It affects all products : front strut tower bars, tow hooks, shift knobs, etc! We’ve priced them as low and as competitive as possible with discounts ranging around $50-$175, that all customers can now benefit.

We also want to inform everyone that any customer who placed an order for Carbing item in the last 6 months have been contacted and sent a gift card for the price difference of the products.

We’re happy to say that our new pricing are now pretty much the best available online (especially with our FAST worldwide shipping) and we’re happier than ever to offer Carbing products at REV9 Autosport. We hope that our customers will continue to trust us with their Miata & MX-5 parts purchases.

We work hard bringing new parts to the market and it happens that some items added a while ago pass under the radar for price drop and we’d like to apologize for the time it took us to react.

Sincerely,

-Maxime Lacroix

Cusco Coilovers & Advan RZ for my 2016+ ND Miata

After I ordered my 2016 ND MX-5 Shop Car, I immediately knew that I would change the suspension on it because I didn’t like the huge wheel gap from factory.

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As much as it was easy to drive it everywhere and not care about clearance over bumps and driving fast over bad roads, I just thought it looked bad.

It became even worse when I installed my 17×8 Advan RZ coupled with 215/40R17 tires :

ugly_wheels

(I only took one picture right after the installation. I didn’t take other as it just looked goofy.)

Installing coilovers on the 2016 ND Roadster is really a piece of cake. Get a friend who has power tools, follow these instructions and you’ll be done within a few hours. Adjustment takes a bit longer, but that depends on everyone. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of my OEM wheels with the lowered suspension, but it’s easy to imagine. The wheels won’t stick out and will be very narrow inside the fenders; not the look I was aiming for.

After installing the Cusco Street Zero Coilovers, everyone who saw my car first and then were just AMAZED. Holy moly, they couldn’t believe how great the car was looking now!

coil1

coil2(I can’t believe how aggressive the car now looks!)

I was also pretty happy to notice that the 17×8 +35 Advan RZ & Yokohama S.Drive 215/40R17 don’t have any stretch and don’t even rub inside the fenders or anywhere during hard cornering! The wheels also sit perfectly flush with the fenders:

coil3
coil4(It did not require any fender work, it just sits within a safe distance of the inner fender and fender “lip”.)

The car now looks much less narrow than it was :

Before:nd_008

After:coil5(I gotta love the wide tires look with no stretch and low rear end.)

Also, I parked it next to my neighbor 2010 911 Carrera and you can see that I’m now a bit lower than he is;photo_911

As for the front, it just looks super aggressive now.

coil6

The Cusco Street Coilovers, after install, felt perfect for this car. They did lower the car a lot after we changed the ride height to our needs. After a test ride, the car felt SO MUCH more comfortable than with the previous Bilstein setup. Car now feels very nice, and less stiff suspension-wise. How is that a good thing? The car is my daily driver and the Bilstein shocks combined with the 215/40R17 tires just felt horrible. I could feel all the bumps in the road and on long-range driving, it would have been hell. The Cusco Street Coilovers really hold their name well, they are made for street mainly and will help you obtain the look you are aiming for. I really would not use the Cusco Street Coilover is I was racing my car often; I would opt for the damping adjustable Cusco Street Zero A Coilover or any other coilover that offer more adjustability! These coilovers suit my needs for now as I am not really racing the car at all and the springs that comes with the suspension are quite soft and comfortable. It’s perfect for a daily driver or week-end cruiser, but not suitable for racers.

coil7(The look just is incredible. Everyone looks at the car and gives thumbs up now!)

The OEM Bilstein Suspension weighted 4.3KG in the front and 4.5KG in the back while the Cusco Coilovers weighted 4.5KG in the front and 4.2KG in the rear. So, the whole adjustable Cusco suspension is 0.2KG lighter than OEM. Not much, but at least it’s not heavier.

As for the wheels & tires, I was not able to weight them, unfortunately, but I know that the Advan RZ 17×8 wheel weights only 7.5KG (16.5 lbs) and it’s a super strong forged wheel with semi-concave spokes. The look of it just made my car look much better:

coil8

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coil10(The semi-concave spokes really fit well with the aggressive look of the ND Roadster.)

Since the wheels are wider and about the same weight as OEM wheels, the contact patch to the ground is much better which provides a better handling. Also, due to the lightness of the wheels, absolutely no loss of performance due to unsprung weight is felt!

After a few days of driving, I have to give advices to those thinking of upgrading coilovers!

Advice 1 : Buy the Cusco Headlight Levelizer Adjustment Rod

Your headlights, after being lowered, will aim much lower than they are supposed to and this means you will lose most of your visibility. If you don’t get the Levelizer Adjustment Rod, your headlights will pretty much light up to ~20-30 feet away from the car which is SUPER close and DANGEROUS as you can’t see anything on the road after that distance:

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coil12

coil13(As you can see, the beam now shoots to the floor really close to the vehicle and it’s not recommended to drive with such a low beam pattern.)

Advice 2 : Check your lowest vehicle’s point
If you lower the car a lot, like I did, you might end up scraping a lot from the front. Don’t worry, it’s not from your front diffusers, but from some kind of front flap just in front of your tires:

coil14

coil15(That small flap is about 1 inch lower than the front diffuser. It’s flexible, but will make noises if you scrape on it. I haven’t checked, but it might be possible to remove it.)

Well, I think I’ll probably raise my car about 1cm each corner to make it more “driveable”. Right now, just the small flap scraped on the ground so the clearance is actually pretty impressive considering how low the car sits. Also, if I want to add aero parts in front and side, it will be much safer to raise the car a bit, and I think I’ll still have zero wheel gap with 1 cm higher.

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure:

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final_2

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You can follow our build on this blog using this link.

Instructions : Installing Coilovers in a 2016+ ND Miata

Installation time : around 2 hours plus any necessary adjustment
Installation difficulty : intermediate
Special tools needed : power tools (highly recommended), 10mm/14mm/17mm wrenches
Notes : Please note that you will need to have an alignment done after the suspension install to make sure your tires use evenly. It is not required to do it RIGHT after, but recommended as soon as you can.

The 2016 MX-5 has quite a bit of wheel gap due to safety regulations and low profile tires. Many people will run it as-is, but a lot of us will want a different look. Changing tires & wheels will definitely improve your car’s look, but without a lowered suspension, it will look goofy (see my coilover review). I wanted to have a more comfortable ride as well as 100% adjustable height, that is why I choose the Cusco Street Zero Coilover System. We also offer PLENTY of other coilover systems as well as springs for the 2016+ ND Miata!

I did not take pictures of the first steps as they are not necessary, but I’ll still explain them. We did not have access to a lift, so we used regular jack to do the whole job.

NEVER forget to set your handbrake when you are doing the suspension work, you wouldn’t want the car to roll down.

We first started by removing the whole trunk interior. It’s super easy, you just need to remove the plastic clips (we used our nails to do it). Spot them and remove the trunk liner. No need to remove the plastic part with the trunk light completely, just remove the plastic clips from it. Then, you’ll see a polished aluminum plate on the driver’s side (left hand drive vehicles), unbolt all the bolts (10mm) holding it remove the polished plate as it’s hiding the suspension top hat.

Then, you need to remove the top hat bolts 17mm (2 per suspension), the driver side is a bit more tricky, but overall it’s quite easy to remove. Keep the nuts as you’ll reuse them when installing your coilovers.

coilover_install_1Passenger side (17mm x 2)

coilover_install_2Driver side (17mm x 2)

Then, you will need to raise your car with a jack. We used our jack with a point in the middle of the car (near the differential) so we could raise both wheels at the same time. You don’t need to raise the car real high, as long as the wheels don’t touch the floor anymore. Next step; remove your rear wheels!

Once the wheels are removed, you’ll see your suspension assembly and the brakes. You need to remove the bolt at the bottom of the suspension (14mm). We suggest using power tools for this one as it’s pretty hard to remove.
coilover_install_3

Once this bolt is removed, just pull down the suspension arms, the suspension will move from its top mounting point and you just need to move it from the way, so that it won’t be attached to the car anymore. Do the inverse using your coilover system and bolt back everything firmly (please note that torque specs are usually included in your suspension instructions).

You can put back your rear wheels and check the ride height!

coilover_install_4

I am not going to go into adjusting your suspension ride height, but best is to install all 4 coilovers, measure your height from factory settings when all 4 wheels are installed and then you re-adjust to your preference.

So, no need to play with suspension adjustment now yet, let’s do the front suspension!

You can now lower the car to the ground. First, let’s open the hood and remove the bolts from the top hats. There are 3 of them per suspension and they are 17mm.

-If you have Mazda OEM Front Strut Bar, it’s a little more difficult to work on, but it is NOT necessary to remove the front strut bar! It’s made so you have access to all bolts using a wrench.
-If you have the intake sound enhancer, we recommend removing it as it’s in the way for the driver side suspension bolts.

coilover_install_5

Please note that the 3rd bolt is hidden in this picture, it’s right under the strut bar.

So, once your nuts are removed, let’s do the hard part. Since you can’t really jack both wheels at the same time, the front takes a little more time as you need to jack each side.

Jack one side of the car, remove the wheel and remove the same bottom bolt as you did for the suspension.

coilover_install_6

As there is less room to play with the front suspension, you need to remove 2 extra bolts so that you have enough room to move the arms and move the suspension out of the way. If it’s not enough, you might need to disconnect the front sway bar (1 bolt, not pictured, sorry!).

coilover_install_7

Then, it’s reverse engineering time, you just need to put back your coilover suspension system and bolt everything tightly.

Put back the wheels and check out your ride height. Measure how lower or higher you want to go and adjust your suspension accordingly! I suggest to drive a few miles and test the suspension (sharp turns) before modifying the factory settings as the suspension might “settle” a bit and make the car a bit lower than after the fresh install.

Last step; Enjoy your awesome looking ride!

coilover_install_8