- The Miata is such a fun car
to drive up and down the California coast
with the wind blowing through my hair,
but the price that we pay for the luxury
of the sea breeze whipping through my quarantine hair
is a downright floppy and bendy chassis.
Because the Miata is a convertible,
the chassis's nowhere near as stiff as it would be
if it had a traditional roof.
You can add a hardtop to the car
to get back some of that rigidity,
but then what about my hair?
I want the best of both damn worlds.
I want a Miata
that doesn't feel like the front's about to fall off
and I want to be able to take the top down and go cruising.
So I went out and put together a kit
of a bunch of chassis braces for about $750
and today we're gonna install them.
Is adding all this hardware
gonna actually stiffen up the chassis
or an I just gonna be adding a bunch of weight
for no reason?
I'm Zach and this is "Money Pit".
Let's get stiff!
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Now back to the show.
- [Cameraman] You dead. (Zach gasping)
- All right so before we go any further
we really need to understand what's going on here
with the Miata's chassis.
Basically the Miata has two strong points.
The firewall is strong and this area is strong to begin with
but is especially strong and stiff
thanks to this roll bar we installed last week.
The weak points of the chassis are basically the rest of it.
On a normal car, generally speaking,
you have what's called a roof.
And the roof itself plays a big roll
in the structural rigidity of the car.
Not having anything here let's the whole thing
kind of fold up and bend up on itself.
So before we go any further let's do our test
and see how floppy this thing is right now.
We just mounted a target to the front of the car,
and then here at the back of the car
we've got a GoPro mount with a laser strapped to it
that we've suction cupped to the quarter panel here.
Right now the car is at rest,
it's not flexing at all,
and the laser lands wherever it lands.
Doesn't really matter where it lands.
All we need to do is mark where it lands currently.
We'll drive the car up onto the flex ramps
and we'll see how far the laser moves from that spot,
which will let us know how much the rear is moving
relative to the front.
Then we'll install all of our chassis bracing
and do the test again
and see how much less the laser moves on the ramps.
This is about as scientific as it gets for us.
We're using lasers.
(house music) (engine idling)
Wow.
You know, I expected it to be a lot worse.
I mean, it's only move maybe a quarter inch.
I'm also just gonna jack this point up
and see how things change over there.
I also want to jack the very front of the car
from the subframe up
and see how much just the frame aprons seem to bend.
(house music)
It seems to flop and flex in a couple different directions
but seems that the laser moves
about as far away from it's center point
every direction that it flops.
So if we can just keep that laser
centered on it's spot after the braces I'll be so happy.
Now let's install this...
(engine revving)
That's one way to do it.
So to stiffen up the Miata
I put together a kit of individual pieces available online.
It's not like I just bought a kit.
I bought four individual items that I thought would add up
to stiffen the chassis of the Miata.
So I got a set of door bars
that'll work in concert with the roll bar
that we installed last week from Zerek,
I got a set of cowl braces from V8 Roadsters,
and I got Flyin' Miata's door bushings
and their frame rails for underneath.
Now the easiest thing to install out of that list
is gonna be these door bushings,
so I'm gonna start here.
These are actually 3D-printed
out of a carbon fiber impregnated nylon I believe.
So they're very rigid.
The factory ones are a metal covered in rubber
and the ones on the car are whooped
and basically they let the door kind of flop around.
(jingling)
You hear that?
That's just the door moving around in the door jam
and it's not good.
If the door is actually supported the way that it should be
it does a pretty decent job
of tying together our two strong points on the car.
So if we have a good bushing that's rigid
and fits nice and tight,
it should help the door support our car
and help us with chassis stiffness.
So installation process for these is super simple.
You just take out the two bolts that hold the old one in
and use them to install your new one
right in the same place.
Okay, so that position seems good,
we can tighten them up.
(house music)
Oh.
Sweatin'.
Success.
That's exciting.
That honestly is probably gonna have
the biggest impact on my daily driving
because it's gonna quiet down
one of the worst rattles on this car.
All right, so next up we've got these cowl stabilizer braces
form V8 Roadster.
These are pretty simple and they're pretty sweet.
So we take the strong section here, the firewall,
and we tie it into this weak section up there.
See the firewall's very strong but as we move forward,
the frame apron, the shock tower,
it's all kind of floppy.
And went you hit a bump or you turn hard or you turn at all,
all this stuff kind of wants to flex.
So if we can tie it rigidly
into the strong section of the firewall
then we should get less flex.
Install process seems pretty straight forward.
It ties into these bolts here,
so I'm gonna pop those off.
(drill buzzing)
And then we'll install the brace.
But that's only part of it
because it needs to tie in up here.
So once it's in place then I can drill holes
(drill buzzing)
for the top and then, (bleep).
And then this will sandwich in this window,
and then everything will be tight and done.
(rattling) (bleep).
(bleep).
Welcome to the madness.
(jazzy music) (wrench cranking)
Now we want that to be sandwiched good and (bleep) tight.
Well that's one done.
Let's go do the other side.
So you might be wondering
what the point of all this is anyway.
I mean, it seems like a lot of work
just to get our chassis to be stiff.
What does it matter, why do you even care?
Well, a lot of it has to do with predictability.
I mean, your chassis, if it's flexing a lot,
acts like a whole 'nother spring in the suspension system
that you can't really account for.
And that's just bad, that just makes it unpredictable.
So if we can stiffen things up and lock down the chassis
it gives the suspension a really good platform to work from.
(soft rock music)
It's time for our frame rails.
Got these from Flyin' Miata.
These should increase overall rigidity a lot.
Flyin' Miata says they saw a 17.5% increase
on a later model Miata
which is already stiffer to begin with than this,
so that's pretty impressive.
They shouldn't be too hard to install,
it's just gonna be a little time consuming.
Got to take the seats out, got to take the carpet up,
all that kind of stuff.
First thing I need to do is the most satisfying part of all,
and that's peel off this backing.
(jazzy music) Oh yeah.
The idea here
is that the factory frame rails on the Miata are pretty weak
and as such a lot of them are bashed in like mine are.
They made these out of stainless
and they just slip over top of these frame rails
like an exoskeleton and stiffen things up.
The problem is when your factory rails are so bashed
that these don't fit on top of them.
So I'm gonna have to get the old persuader out,
bash this stuff back into place,
and then these will go on top.
(banging)
- [Sound Guy] Jesus (bleep), dude.
Could you (bleep) say something first?
(Zach chuckles)
- Yeah, get used to that for a minute.
We're gonna be doing some more.
(banging) (house music)
The way these are aligned on the chassis
is by a series of captive nuts.
The nuts that are welded into place
slide into existing holes in the Miata's frame rails.
(banging) (house music)
All right, so we've got this thing on
and our nuts are lined up.
So this thing is on the car where it needs to stay.
So I'm gonna put a floor jack under it to support it
to make sure it doesn't shift around at all,
and then I'm gonna start drilling holes
and putting hardware in.
Ya feel me?
(house music) (drill buzzing)
- [Camera Man] Can you pull your shirt
so that I can see the buff horses in the back?
Then we'll just put a little arrow
being like buy your buff horse shirt at Donut.
- [Zach] And maybe put some arrow to my biceps
'cause of how buff I am?
- [Camera Man] Okay. (laughter)
- All right, so the driver's side
we got the frame rail in place
and we've got all the holes drilled.
So I could just drop a bunch of hardware in it right now
and tighten it all up,
but I'm not gonna.
I'm gonna go to the passenger's side
and get it just as far along as this side.
Because before I put all the hardware in
and tighten everything up for a final time,
I want to paint
all these bare metal holes that I just drilled
and I don't want them to rust.
Water gets kicked up,
water may rest down there, I don't know.
It's just better to paint bare metal than to leave it.
(drill buzzing)
All right, we just got done with our frame rails
and we're moving on to the last thing of the day, door bars.
Pretty excited for these.
I think they're gonna do a lot for chassis rigidity.
They're also gonna protect me in the event of a side impact
and they're gonna look pretty sweet.
First thing we're gonna do to install the door bars
is remove these three bolts from the roll bar,
because this is gonna go like that and use those same holes.
(drill buzzing)
Now we got to drill three holes down here.
(drill buzzing) (house music)
Am I on the right (bleep) one?
No. (laughs)
Just got the first door bar in
and it installed super easily.
Works great with the roll bar,
just had to drill a few holes and it's in.
It looks cool
and it doesn't look like is gonna be too intrusive.
The only thing I have left to do
to finalize the door bar install is trim the carpet,
which I'll do but I'm gonna get the other door bar in first.
Then I'll do the carpets at the same time.
(house music)
Well, the good news is we didn't do anything today
that could make it not run,
so it still runs great.
Now let's put it back on these flex ramps
and see if we've changed
how much flex there is in the chassis.
(house music)
Yeah, it's a little ugly dot.
- [Camera Man] What are you gonna do?
(engine revving)
- Is that closer?
I think that's closer. - I think it's the exact same.
I think it's touching the laser.
I think there was a gap in the,
there was a cardboard gap earlier.
I do think that's a touch closer.
Is it drastic?
Hell no.
(house music)
Okay, that's in the air.
What do we got?
Whoa!
Was that what it was like earlier?
I don't even remember.
- [Camera Man] No, it was off to the left before I think.
- Well that's cool.
Thigh master.
Chassis master.
What was this one like earlier?
- [Camera Man] I think upper left.
- Well she's dead nuts.
So that laser is dead at where it started
which is awesome.
That means definitely
two of these three tests we improved on.
The first test I could be convinced either way.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
But you know what,
at the end of the day we're just looking at
a laser pointer on a piece of cardboard
and I don't really care too much about that.
What I care about is how the car drives.
So let's go.
Ooh.
Ooh!
You know I'm trying to make sure I'm not imaging it,
but it does feel crisper and snappier already
just kind of driving around.
Let's hit this bump.
Oh, not a single noise!
Not a single noise out of place.
That's incredible.
But the question is
is all this chassis bracing worth $750?
And honestly that's kind of a tough question to answer
because that's a lot of money.
But for me it's worth it.
For some increased chassis rigidity,
some increased safety,
and some massively decreased
rattles and creaks and squeaks and noises.
I can't wait to take this car into the canyons,
hammer on it,
and see how good it feels.
I bet it's gonna feel pretty good
and I'm gonna feel pretty good
because I'm gonna feel a lot safer
with the new roll bar and these door bars
and everything we did today.
So thank you for watching.
Don't forget to subscribe,
and follow we on Instagram @zachjobe.
Follow Donut @donutmedia.
Bye!
Check, check, check, check
check, check, ch-check, check, check,
check, check, check.
Hey, you want this shirt?
Well we got a limited quantity of them right now.
Basically here the deal.
The logo on the front is a little too small.
So rather than throwing them away,
we decided to tie dye them.
And, well, look at it.
(techno music)
So go to DonutMedia.com to get yours but go quick,
because trust me when I say they're gonna sell out fast.
We don't have that many.