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CO. Daily ND Gets Upgrade from Ohlins to SuperMiata Xidas
I think we have all heard the story at this point, “suspension preload is important”, and like many others, I was fooled by this mythical line of marketing for so many years; that choice cost me about $2.5k and mild resentment of my ND for the first year and a half of ownership. I am here to say that there is light at the end of this tunnel and I found it when I swapped off the Ohlins into the SuperMiata Xidas. While I am sure this is relatively the same situation across much of the US, Colorado’s roads while being some of the most beautiful in this country, are difficult to engineer and maintain as we try to compete with the daily freeze/thaw cycle in winter and intense heat in summer (though, the former is generally more taxing). These variables culminate in our asphalt roads hosting massive ruts and/or potholes and most of our concrete being woefully misaligned across their panels--almost as if you were trying to drive down a stair set.
Before purchasing my ND, I was dead set on purchasing a set of Ohlins for it given all I heard about them in contexts that were admittedly often not related to Miatas--especially not our Mk4s. Within the first 200 miles of driving it off the lot, I had installed my long-sought-after and oh-so-special golden-hue Ohlins. At first, I was stoked to no longer see the unsightly monster-truck-esque ride height, but before too long—literally a week—I was already tired of driving down the road with my *** leaving the seat whenever I encountered a bump that was greater than an inch in drop-height. With the Ohlins, I had turned my brand-new ND into a high school-grade Civic that felt like riding on a set of eBay coilovers. Don’t get me wrong, the few roads we do have that are as nice as freshly-laid track resulted in some serious G’s, but outside those short thousand-foot stretches, I began to suffer from severe buyer’s remorse. I was now on a quest to fall in love with my ND again. First, though, this time around I needed to learn all that I could to make a more well-informed purchasing decision. Given Ohlin’s history, they command evident pedigree within motorsports, however, this prior working knowledge does not always translate into the idea that their products are the best option for a more easily adaptable application to many different cars. Without getting too technical—as this post is meant to be more of a review—I would highly suggest you take some time to research suspension theory and how its application to modern-day suspension technology to understand everything at play here. I will go into more detail about the suspension intricacies below. TL;DR there are two high-level considerations we need to keep in mind: one, a spring’s purpose is to control a car’s weight in a (generally) linear fashion across its operating range, and two, a spring and dampening combination that allows vehicle’s suspension components to operate across their intended full range—as engineered—is very important, i.e., both droop and compression-travel = good! (Skip the next two paragraphs if you are familiar with the two concepts from above.)
The former point above relates directly to the marketing bullshit with the term “preload” that is fed to the enthusiast-layperson to sell their standard, cheap-to-produce, two-piece coilover products. Sure, they can get you slammed-on-its-nuts low but it will ride like *** on anything other than a perfect road and result in an overall slower pace in any circuit setting. In regards to the springs in a vehicle, other than at the edges of its operating range, the spring will compress linearly with the amount of force applied to it, i.e, 10mm of compression travel in the first 100lbs of force can be doubled for the entire operating range of the coil, where 200lbs of compression force results in 20mm of compression travel, and so on.
What does this mean for you? Let’s say you were to apply 100lbs of preload to your spring, once installed, anytime there is more compression force applied to that coil, it will have to overcome that 100lbs of preexisting force before it will compress any further; this directly results in a rougher ride for you and the inability for the suspension components to do their job of absorbing inconsistencies in the driving surface to keep the chassis stable and provide comfort. With the preload bullshit out of the way, my latter point mentioned above is where a lot of driver comfort comes into play—this is especially important for us on the Miata platform since our cars are the size that they are. From the factory, the ND comes with about seven inches of total travel in the rear suspension; initially, this may be counterintuitive, that massive amount of travel is very important for the drivability of the car since that operating range directly translates to an increase of the damper’s impulse (force/time) action for those larger bumps. This also reduces the “tri-pod effect” that a car’s chassis forces the suspension into in hard cornering situations--keeping the wheels on the ground is a good thing! I know a lot of us have been away from it for some time but these concepts are simple grade school physics type-stuff and if you are having difficulty wrapping your mind around it, I highly recommend you do some research and try to find examples of the aforementioned principles in action. Perhaps,
from Keith over at Flyin’ Miata will help. After months of research and sitting on the idea of having to shell out thousands more on what I thought I had already solved, I finally settled on SuperMiata’s Xida: a mono-body, adjustable damper, coilover solution for my ND (at config-level I purchased, you can go wayyy up from mine). And let me tell you, if something happened and I had to burn the money to purchase them again, I would in a heartbeat. I will try to keep the actual review of the Xidas short and sweet: they’re highly capable, highly adjustable, confidence-inspiring, completely uncompromising, and result in one of the most fun experiences you can have when driving an ND on pavement. Because of my experience with the Xidas, I will never consider a two-piece coilover on any car I own ever again..there truly is something to be said for a system upgrade that results in the system operating how it was engineered, just better--especially when that engineering lineage spans over 30 years (older than me). (ND Sunset ride-height ~12.5” square; 17x9 +45 6UL w/ 245/40 RE-71R) (Xidas out of the box; new orders should have Swift or Hyperco springs installed…mine have Eibach as I was one of the first customers of the new generation of dampers and they did not want me waiting any longer just for springs) (Xidas Front after just under a year of use while being daily driven in the snow.) (Xidas Rear after just under a year of use while being daily driven in the snow. Look at the amount of droop......)
If anyone has any questions, it may take me a bit to reply but I would be happy to answer!
Last edited by sad_boi_bran; 05-03-2022 at 04:13 PM.
05-03-2022 | 12:42 AM
CO. Daily ND Gets Upgrade from Ohlins to SuperMiata Xidas
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