Miata Mailing List: March 1999, Message #2598

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Hello All,

Since so many folks responded to my wheel project, encouraging me to move
ahead, I though I'd dust off a few other pet projects and bring you all up
to speed. I appreciate the input from everyone, I received over 120 responses!

Someone hinted that a few folks were complaining about what I am doing, but
no one emailed me directly with a complaint, so it must not amount to
anything more than background noise. With seven kids, I've learned to treat
that sort of whining as it deserves. If someone has a complaint they'd like
to stand behind, my telephone number is and has always been 404-847-9117.

On to business:

We at the Miata Club love Koni shock absorbers and have been recommending
them for years. However, being an American, I always thought that there
should be some competition in the "you can lower your Miata with this shock
absorber" market. Sure, there are a bunch out there with threaded collars,
but for a simple, relatively low cost, fully adjustable (damping and
height), there was just Koni.

Well, the Club has started up a nice relationship with Hella, who has
started up a nice relationship with Mazda, and in the course of events we
met Ron Egan, a heads-up Miata enthusiast at Hella. We are talking about
more "drop-in" fog light kits for the M1 Miatas. Ron has a friend at
Bilstein and Ron came up with the idea for a way to modify the Bilstein to
make it height-adjustable. 

When Ron told me about this, I contacted the powers that be at Bilstein and
told them about our Club and all the folks who would love to have a
lowering Bilstein for our Miatas. They were more than agreeable, providing
the engineering can be worked through, which we are helping them with now.

So hopefully at or near the price of a set of Konis we will now have a set
of Bilsteins to consider when it comes to lowering a Miata and upgrading
the standard dampers. The roll-out should be around mid to late summer.
Possibly with an incentive for Club members. We're working out the details
on the membership's behalf.

Like I said before, we've been doing this sort of product development
behind the scenes for ten years now, but since it appears to be of interest
to the list, I'll fill you in as we go along.

I'm also working up a Weber conversion for the 1.6L just for yuks, with
shortie quad throttle bodies to follow. 1.8L goodies as well. Stay tuned.

Oh, and for the folks who are worried that I might actually be making money
at this, relax. My engineering is gratis on these projects, hopefully for
the greater good if I do my job right. 

Happy Motoring!

Norman Garrett
MCA



Norman Garrett
MCA