For anyone still using a Saner bar, I installed these bushings last night. They are a very nice replacement for the stock bushings, can be easily greased, and have little crevaces in the bushing to hold grease, so it doesn't all just squirt out the side of the bushing. Took the car to work today and it feels great. Not bad for $20.

Advance Auto Parts:
http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/buy...absorbers.html
*There are tons of Advance Auto Parts coupons online if you google. I ended up only paying $26 for the bushings and 2 oil filters for my SI.

Autozone:
http://www.autozone.com/autozone/acc...er=353704_0_0_

 

Yup, good choice! To keep that FSB quiet and happy, I lubed it at least a couple of times a year and those fittings make it a 2 minute job.

 

Question about the Miata NC front sway bar (for S2000 rear). I did some searching but I'm still not clear on what I need to make it work.

So I need the NC '06 or newer front bar (non-hardtop?)

S2000 OEM end-links I'm guessing?

What size on the energy suspension bushings/brackets? Not sure what size in mm's I would need.

Collar clamps?

Thanks for any help on this!

 

I used a base-model NC MX-5 front bar. Ordered used from The Parts Group for $60 shipped. It came with brackets, bushings and swaged collars already on the bar. You'll need to adjust the location of the collars. Simple solution is to use a large crescent wrench to go around the bar and butt up against the collar, hit the crescent wrench with a mallet and the collar will move on the sway bar shaft.

Stock s2k endlinks work fine.

 

It sounds even easier than I thought it would be. I checked with the Parts Group and they don't have any at the moment. It doesnt look much more than $100 if I have to buy new stuff so that's not too bad either.



So I would just need to order the bar (1) a couple of bushings (2) and a couple of brackets (3). It looks like these collars you are talking about are already on the bar? There is not an option to buy them otherwise so that would make sense.

 

Yep, you've got it. I forgot to mention that I enlarged the holes in the brackets to gain a bit more clearance between the bar and the diff mount fasteners. Sounds like the collars come with the bar from Mazda, which makes sense.

 

I ended up installing this last weekend, even less work than I thought. The collars moved with relative ease and I checked the fit of everything to see about the need to enlarge the holes. I found that bolted up into place, I could still slide a medium sized zip tie on the bar past the diff fasteners. I just bolted it up as is, not sure if I would need any more gap there or not?

The only thing I did differently was move the stock end links to the inside (away from the wheel) because they were too close to the shocks on the outside.

 

So this may be a dead argument in most circles...but I'm jumping in on a project car that was started before me on an AP1. This car is still running no rear sway bar, and this is some debate about whether on not to install one. Is there anyone succeeding at a national level without a rear sway bar?

 

Our car runs no rear sway right now, and Justin Neal, the car owner was only beaten by Rob Rockefeller, Colin Fiedler, and Brian Peters on day 2 of Nationals this year, and had run ~10sec of the course the way he did his first two runs, would have been top time on that side (the course that didn't hurt the AP1 as much). Several other East Coast fast folks (Brian Karwan, of note) run no rear sway. We took the MX-5 bar with us to Lincoln but elected not to use it. We've actually never found a situation after going to our current spring rates (much softer than most people run) where the rear bar was a positive. Car puts down power wonderfully, and the soft rates give it a higher level of mechanical grip than most others have found with their cars. Does not have the slalom responsiveness of the uber-stiff folks though.

Many folks disagree with this setup, but it certainly works.

 

It's a compromise. No rear bar equals tons of rear traction but sluggish response in transition. Miata bar with 5-600 lbs rear Springs equals slightly less rear bite but much better weight transfer in transition. Our Bsp car feels better with the bar. Different driving styles will be different results. The bar on would be faster on a transition heavy course

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