CarKid's Ravings on Miata

Recently I was thinking at work about Miatas. No surprise really, i own one and love it to death. The problem is that I dont see it being a year round car. (im from Cleveland Ohio)

Now I'll be completely honesty here, it could have been the bue tooling dye that got to my head and that caused me to dream up this craziness. Alternately it could just be more ideas from CarKid...

Ok. Take your Miata and get a hardtop because if your using it all season it just makes sense.

Get cheap Ebay coilover kit and FM springs or generic Summit/Jegs springs with equal rates

Essentially in the summer you lower the suspension to however you feel and drive it for fun and all that.

Then when winter comes jack the Miata up a bit (an inch or two or so over stock) and run a 15 inch truck tire or something.

Problems that i forsee: -Might need adjustable endlinks due to raising and lowever height -Alignment would prob be off...right?

So. is it worth it? am i just babbling? I think the Miata could be a fun all year car if it was kinda rallyish.

I dunno

why would you need to raise it in the winter? Are you actually going through standing snow?

he's up in the primary lake effect snow belt - so there is plenty of standing snow on the roads when the plows can't keep up. it's like that here too, last week there was a good 4-5" on the roads because they couldn't plow fast enough.

see Keith's Targa Miata for rally-type ideas

my E30 is rather lowered and i havent had a problem so far as that. if its more then 3 inches on a surface i would drive on, i shouldnt be driving. I live in the mountians (i go through something like an 1,800 foot climb in the 15min it takes to get to school) and we get some heavy ass snows. But unless im out in the mess when its emergency level i wouldnt have a problem as the plows keep up. yes, you would have to clear the berms that the snow plow makes at the end of your driveway, but a small price vs yearly suspension parts swaps.

rather then suspension adjustments, LSD, LSD, and LSD. i dont have one in the E30 and with the khumo no-seasons its kinda sucking when i have to drive on the white stuff. biggest thing i have is DONT STOP, you wont get going again.

I cant really drive it in really snow covered road conditions because of this, but I am in process of getting an extra set of wheels and am probly going to get studded snow tires for it. (I regularly drive on a twisty road in the middle of the woods that they dont salt,) I have had studs before (on an aerostar van, rear only though) and NOTHING could stop it. so as they are legal for the season around here, thats the way im gonna go. (also cheaper then blizzacks and i theorize that the performance will last longer)

in short, for a miata SNOW TIRES, LSD, hardtop, and maybe unhooking a rear swaybar endlink.

everyone overfrets driving in the snow, if you get the right tires you shouldnt be having a problem.

Yeah, why do you need to raise it? They don't have snowplows where you come from? I need to take a pic of mine in winter dress: hardtop on, stock seats back in, blacked out daisies with all seasons, but otherwise the same as it was all summer for street and STS autocross use.

Just get two Miatas, a winter one and a summer one.

I think it would be more fun raised a little. Done up kinda rally. I dunno....like i said. tool dye

I deliver pizza year-round in my miata. It is lowered an inch and I have snow tires on it. Sometimes the plows don't get out and I have to drive through small patches of standing snow but if I keep moving it is fine. We do get less snow down here though so I can't say how it would be up in Cleveland.

I've run one year round in Ontario, Canada. Not a good car for deep snow, but how often does that really, actually happen?

Adjustable end links not required. Higher ride height, sure, if you want. Turns out the factory spec for a 1990 has a 2" range when you look in the manual! Snow tires, definitely. Don't make the mistake of going fat, use a 185 at the widest. The cars do look cool up on their toes with knobby tires, and I'm always playing with the ride height of the Targa car. You will change the alignment with ride height changes, though.

Richard Dekker used to run his year-round in Edmonton and spent a bunch of the winter ice racing. He'd disconnect the sways from what I remember.

I have a friend here in CT that bought his Miata new in '97. It has been his daily driver for all this time which has included some pretty gnarly snow storms. He's only had trouble one time and that's when he got caught in a surprise storm on his summer tires. Good snow tires are the key. He now has well over 300,000 miles on it and still going strong.

Any questions?

yeah, my fiancee's mom has a sky redline - it's in the garage covered up and she drives a 98 park avenue in the winter.

she'd wipe out the sky in the snow, she is a scary driver

I've said it before in a thread about your miata, and in other threads about tires.

Buy GOOD snow tires (not performance "ice" tires) and you'll push through an AMAZING amount of snow. Lot's of daily driven all-season Miata's around here. The Hankook IPike W409's have made my wife's E30 (with open diff) absolutely unstoppable in snow. You can just about park it in a drift, then drive through.

patgizz wrote: yeah, my fiancee's mom has a sky redline - it's in the garage covered up and she drives a 98 park avenue in the winter. she'd wipe out the sky in the snow, she is a scary driver

Just for clarity, I DO drive my Solstice all year around. As long as the snow isn't tooo deep, it actually does quite well with the traction and stability control.

njansenv wrote: I've said it before in a thread about your miata, and in other threads about tires. Buy GOOD snow tires (not performance "ice" tires) and you'll push through an AMAZING amount of snow. Lot's of daily driven all-season Miata's around here. The Hankook IPike W409's have made my wife's E30 (with open diff) absolutely unstoppable in snow. You can just about park it in a drift, then drive through.

So true. I'd take good snow tires over all wheel drive without snow tires any day. It's especially important to have good snow tires when your car is equipped with ABS, as how fast you stop is entirely dependent on the amount of traction there is. AWD helps you start, but only snow tires will help you stop better. That said, I don't have snows on my Solstice.

I haven't missed a day of work in Indianapolis so far this winter in my lowered Celica on Ventus RS2s.

It has taken me a VERY long time to get here a time or two, but i wouldn't have gone any faster in an SUV with spiked snow tires. Traffic comes to a standstill.

I've been daily driving my Miata all winter here in Pittsburgh on 175-65-14 Cooper studded snow tires and the only thing that slows me down in snow are all the SUVs creeping around at 5mph. I'm on a Tein Flex suspension at about 12" front and 12.5" rear. No problems with getting high centered yet but the deepest standing snow I've encountered has been about 4"