Suspension set up, first try

I lurked around for a few months looking for a good deal. Bilsteins are super high quality, rebuildable, and indestructable, so I was looking for some used R package bilsteins that I could possibly revalve down the road. I stumbled upon a set of R package bilsteins that had received the holy grail of mods - they had been revalved and converted to adjustable rods by a now dead company called ShockTek. There are a bunch of rumors floating around about these mysterious shocks that made others a bit nervous to bid on them. I didn't hear the rumors until after I bid, so I won the set for $187. They are worth about three times that much. I had them dynoed by resident Miata suspension wizard and all around good guy Shaikh at Fat Cat Motorsporst . Turns out bilsteins really ARE indestructable... my ShokTeks are still matched to within 2-4% of each other. Score. Shaikh liked what he saw. In fact, he's in the process of designing his own adjustable rods so that he can offer a similar conversion. Here are the shocks set up with stock mounts and racing beat springs, along with FatCatMotorsports 46mm bumpstops:

Long bolt method made the installation easy. I love working on this car.

UPDATE - Bilstein's are indestructable, but shocktec Bilsteins are not. Two out of four have blown out, and the other two are on the way. The problem - Shocktec didn't spec a hard enough steel for the rods and they score over time, which eventually leads to the seals blowing out. Plus, Racing Beat springs are not for me. They are too low and too soft and they cause the car to spend a lot of time in the bumpstops. I wouldn't use them unless they were shimmed up atleast a half inch. SOOOO...

Suspension set up, second try

I bought a 92 that had a new set of koni's installed on it. Took the koni's, sold the car. Free Koni's. As for springs, I tried the Racing Beats I had just to see how it'd work out, and they were worse on the Koni's than they were on the Shocktec's. I did a little research and decided to go with Koni race sleeves and Eibach springs. I'm running standard Ground Control rates - 375lbs front, 250lbs rears.

I'm using Energy Suspension isolators above the springs, but in retrospect I'd just order another set of the nylon isolators (the white nylon pieces in the first pic) from Koni and use them on the top of the springs too.

Impressions - Wow, the extra spring rate has transformed the car, and the handling has not suffered in the least. With the previous setup, I was running huge sway bars to make up for the softer springs. This gave decent transitions side to side, but squat and dive were still heavier than I wanted. This probably made the car hook up better in drag launches, but it made it difficult to control in the corners. I went back to stock sways for the time being because I was having endlink issues, but I'll eventually go back to a bigger front bar and leave the stock rear, but int he meantime, I'm very happy with how the car is handling. If anything, the car is beggin for more tire now, because the michelin pilots I'm running are not keeping up with the limits of the suspension.