Miata Rear Subframe Drop. What's the deal with that? Do I need it?

@jimmyhasnogarage Subframe drop on my lifted Miata! People asked about it a lot but no one was able to provide good info on how to actually do it. I guess ill become the first…😂 #offroadmiata #offroadster #miat #miot #miata #mx5 #subframe #bodylift #howto #diy #liftedmiata #offroad #offroading #4x4 ♬ original sound - JimmyHasNoGarage

Usually, people call this a body lift but we Miata people call it a subframe drop. I guess that's because our goal is different. We do it so that the cv axle can live longer...

When this was filmed, I still had my old coilover setup that was meant to lower the car. The coilovers only had around 3.25" of shock travel and the whole thing is not too long. You can see that after the subframe drop, the lower control arms were pointing up instead. I lost quite some lift because the subframe drop negated the lift. But with my new Godspeed coilover setup you will still have plenty of lift, and very likely no rubbing when springs are compressed because the unibody is now 2.75" further away from the wheels!

On NA Miatas the unibody has two studs & a threaded hole each side, I had to pull two more bolts in it to bolt it down. NB Miatas just have 3 bolt holes each side which is much easier, you just need 6 longer 12x1.25 bolts. I found 90mm for a 2.75" tubing a good length.

Some would say that you need to put a spacer/sleeve in the middle of the tube so that when you tighten it it won't get crushed. I think the square tube I got was beefy enough that I don't need to do that. 

Check out my Godspeed coilover setup! The subframe drop tubes are included in the kit, a true bolt on!

PDF version of this install can be found HERE. Some pictures in the PDF were old and you could see that I still had the paco lift kit+ Coilovers instead of my own :)