The Miata Project – part 3.7

OK, so I’m drawing this out, but understand that I’m still waiting for the Chaparral wheels to show up so we can get the new Bridgestone Potenza tires mounted and complete the package.

Yesterday I spent over four hours installing a substantial under car bracing from Flyin’ Miata.  Its called a butterfly brace and is an amazing piece of engineering and construction.  It consists of a set of frame rail reinforcements as well as a more bracing to tie them together.  It meant that I had to remove the seats and pull up the carpet so that I could drill sixteen holes for bolts that would tie it to the car’s frame as well as bolt all the connecting braces together.  These last pieces were the most difficult part of the assembly with the connecting hardware almost impossible to reach with wrenches.

The results are amazing.  The rigidity was noticeable even just backing the car out of the garage.  The Miata wasn’t your typical floppy convertible chassis in the first place, but now it is really tight.

I also took it to get the alignment done by a local shop that is run by a guy who is also a road racer.  We gave him the specs we wanted and less than two hours later the car was perfect.  We were conservative because this is not going to be a track car, it is going to be a fantastic handling street car.   Front camber was set to 1 degree negative with 5 degrees of caster and toe-in set to 1/16″ total.  The rear was set to 1.5 degrees negative and toe-in was also set to 1/16″. 

I can’t wait until the owner takes the wheel and finds out for himself how this baby drives.  Hurry up wheels – you’re holding things up!