I’m looking for technical help or recommendations on:
Hi There
Sorry if this has been covered, I did a search and nothing came up!
The previous owner of my car put it coil overs (height adjustable only) which has a drop of about (only) 30MM. Currently the Rear wheels are like /—… any one else experience this when dropping their MX5?
As far as i can see I do not have adjustable camber arms, just the OEM ones. The previous owner also took it to Roddinsons for a wheel alignment which I assume, if they were adjustable this would have been sorted as well.
Usually when I have dropped cars before Ive also added adjustable camber arms to counter the lean… so unless Im missing something with the mx5 (Im new to them) are there any suggestions on decent ones I should buy?
Hard to tell from this angle and from photos but they are pretty recessed at the top due to extreme camber
From the pics they look fine. Another way to check if there’s anything amiss is to check how the tyres are wearing across the tread. If the former owner got the alignment checked right after the work was done, they could be out as it takes a few hundred miles for new shocks to settle. Without going to any great expense, take it to a good car alignment/tyre centre and get it checked again….it shouldn’t be too far out and the rears have multi adjustment that can be done without buying any extensible adjustable drop links.
Agree with Davy, looks fine to me if a fairly recent alignment has been undertaken by Roddisons, that’s your assurance that things are golden as you say, difficult to show on pics, I’ve had a look on my photos and can’t really see anything decent to show. Mines the silver car.
Your car as standard has adjustable camber, so if it was set after suspension upgrade it should be OK; unless something has moved.
Eyes better than mine in the posts above telling you they are fine, personally I would struggle to tell you if something was a degree out without measuring it.
Thanks for this… maybe I’m being paranoid as not used to the camber!
Out of interest which spacers do you run?
Might just take it to get the alignment as not sure how long after the suspension was put on the alignment was done. So might have moved as some have mentioned once thr sus settled.
So after having a quick look under the car, the inner rear camber bolts look like the below… after driving the car and scrubbing in the nearly new tyres I’m definitely getting more wear on the inside…
Is it easy enough to adjust the camber myself on mx5s or du think i should leave it to an expert…
I’m pretty used to working on cars but, I know I’ll need to get exact degrees… don’t mind the trial and error approach… any suggestions welcome!!
It also costs about the same as one good tyre.
Now consider if it’s left to be wrong; that could be four good tyres prematurely worn out.
They will also find other contributory problems such as worn ball joints etc.
Google it. You can make spacers and run string around and measure angles and so on.
Or you could buy equipment to do it (making measurement easier). But you will get what you pay for…
Assuming all adjusters are not seized then yes you can do it yourself, and it would be rewarding, race teams do it all the time… and if it ends up being a nightmare it is easy just to make it driveable and go to somewhere with a Hunter system.
If you do do it yourself, and are happy with the results, I would still be tempted to go to a pro to measure it to see how well you did. Just getting a check is usually pretty cheap, it is when they have to get the spanners out the cost starts going up. I’d not expect to pay over £100 including some serious adjustments.
Upto you if you have the time to play. But definitely worth going round the adjusters one by one making sure you can move them. Quite common (I beleive) to have one seized. I put my car in to a local garage to get it done and they did what they could and told me one of the front was seized, as was the tracking adjusters. Cost me to get the tracking ones released, but they gave up on one that went through a front wishbone, and told me they needed to cut it out and replace the wishbone.
I managed to release the adjuster on my drive with a bottle jack, and some effort (maybe I was lucky), then went to a different garage to get the tracking redone.
Good on you if you try yourself, good learning experience, even if you do go to a garage to finish it off.
Thanks for this… yes I’m still in two minds. I don’t mind tinkering and played around with camber on other cars, I’ve had and from feel , got it pretty good for how I drive… granted… had easy to use after market adjustable camber arms and took nearly 2 weeks of trial and error to get right… but like you say, pretty satisfying when you dial it in yourself!
Bolts and adjusters I’m not worried about, the previous owner had then all replaced within the last year when he underseal and replaced all the bushes… maybe that’s a reason why it might have slipped some if everything has taken some time to bed in.
if a fairly recent alignment has been undertaken by Roddisons, that’s your assurance that things are golden 
as you say, difficult to show on pics, I’ve had a look on my photos and can’t really see anything decent to show. Mines the silver car.
