Update: Happy April Fools Everyone!
It’s no secret that at DriverMod, we’re obsessed with performance; suspension geometry, camber curves, the contact patch of a tire – it’s these things that keep us up at night. Because of this obsessive focus on performance, we’ve never really had a chance to build a car has the looks to back up its performance. Now that the Ecotec Miata project is wrapped up and making solid power, we decided that it was time to address the elephant in the room; the car’s awful stance.
15×6.5 wheels combined with chunky tires and a 4×4 ride height isn’t going to be breaking any necks in this summer’s show car circuit, so visited our local stance shop found this set of stunning, two-piece 18×10 WORK Meister wheels with a three-inch lip. We then fitted a set of 205 tires over them to really show off the lip of these brilliant wheels. However, as any stance guy knows, a proper set of wheels and tires is only one part of a true stance build.
In order to address the car’s ridiculous ride height, we swapped out the existing Xida coilovers for something that’ll allow for more low. Specifically; Yonaka coilovers. Unfortunately, even at their lowest setting, we still weren’t able to achieve the look we were going for. More so, the soft Yonaka springs meant that in testing, that car had enough body roll to nearly destroy the factory fenders. So, the factory Yonaka springs came off, and were replaced with ultra stiff, four-inch 24k springs. Driving around with such a frame-laying ride height obviously led to other problems, particularly, severe rubbing. To address this, we removed all fender liners and shaved the inside of the wheel wells with an angle grinder.
Being this low, there was no way these wheels would fit without some serious negative camber. Using adjustable upper control arms we were able to achieve an impressive 10 degrees of negative camber – just enough to achieve perfect lip-to-fender fitment.
You’re probably thinking that this obscene lowness is a recipe for a cracked oil pan, and you’d be right. To protect our vital fluids, we needed to raise up the engine. Our friend Rajan at R Theory Motorsports manufactures these engine mount spacers that slide between the Ecotec Miata engine mounts and the body, in order to raise the engine up about half an inch. This gives our oil pan an extra half-inch of ground clearance.
The end result is epic. Serious low combined with serious fitment, we couldn’t be happier with the final result. The plan now? Get this car a much-needed coat of paint, a new exhaust, and it’ll be finished for good.
Shout out to Markis Sarkis for his help with this build, and Rajan at R Theory Motorsports for providing our engine mount spacers!