Ride height with parallel wishbones

[Evangelion]

Those who enquire about ride height on here are always being told that the ideal ride height is with the wishbones parallel to the ground. Well I'm about to set the height on my Mk 1 and I was wondering what to go for. So what is the ride height with the wishbones parallel?

[Rothgo Wooft]

I think that the point is with different tyre and wheel combinations, there is no correct height, only a correct geometry.

I'd eyeball it to about right, then use a suitable stick held against the ground to measure the in board and out board ends of the lower wishbones to check how parallel to the ground* they really are. Then fine tune.

ETA *Flat surface required.

Edited by Rothgo Wooft on Tuesday 1st June 22:41

[Matt UK]

Mine runs on R15 195/50 tyres and was told to go for a ride height of approx 13" to 13.5" from wheel arch to centre hub.
13" is the lowest you want to go.

[Ab Shocks]

Depends what you are doing with the car, everybody wants level lower wishbones and steering rods to avoid bump steer and then I see really fast Ma5da racing guys running lower than a snakes belly.

I have found that measuring from the lowest flat point of the sill front and rear that 130mm gives great handling and allows me to just about get over speed bumps. The reason I run the car flat is to avoid throwing too much weight forward on track days on heavy braking and destabilising the rear, some top race drivers run negative rake by 5mm to improve this even more and aid traction.

[Evangelion]

Of course those racing chappies are using much harder spring/damper/ARB settings than we are so they would have a lot less suspension movement.

Measuring the sill height is an interesting method; I've just done mine and they're 120 front and 125 rear. This is too low. I set it too low in the first place and since then it's settled by about an inch. I'm going to try 320 front and 330 rear (at the wheelarches) and see how I get on over the weekend. Getting the geometry done on Wednesday.

(Edited four the usual pour spelyng)

Edited by Evangelion on Thursday 3rd June 10:21

[MX-5 Lazza]

Evangelion said:

Of course those racing chappies are using much harder spring/demper/ARB settings than we are so they would have a lot less suspension movement.

Derek (Ab Shock) supplies most of those guys so knows exactly what set-up they have . Anyway, he's not suggesting that we should have our cars set up that way - they don't have to drive their cars back home after a track session for a start - just pointing out that there are other ways to set up a car that can address handling traits in a different way.

[Evangelion]

MX-5 Lazza said:

Evangelion said:

Of course those racing chappies are using much harder spring/demper/ARB settings than we are so they would have a lot less suspension movement.

Can you wait till I've corrected my crap spelling before you quote, otherwise it makes me look a bit of a twit. And I'm quite capable of doing that on my own.

Just got an idea for a thread. Starting it now.