Flyin Miata Butterfly Brace

Angreal · Post by **Angreal** » Tue May 22, 2012 10:24 pm

This is more for Sprsta as he'll be installing it for me but I figured people might be interested as well.

Anyhow, they arrived yesterday and I finally opened them this evening and discovered I had a spare set of frame rails (Mad Kiwi's) which was a nice surprise. Shows how much I read paperwork or invoices... Somehow I misread it and thought they didn't send them and that I'd somehow let Mad Kiwi down.

Angreal · Post by **Angreal** » Tue May 22, 2012 10:36 pm

I guess Furai wouldn't like these as you have to drill 28 holes in the floor and "massage" any dents out of the rails before fitting them. Also requires either flexibility or a flexible wrench and lots of swearing...

Miata.net says it takes about 4 hours to get done.

Furai · Post by **Furai** » Tue May 22, 2012 10:54 pm

Oh god no, mine do have a few dents in them but Im glad there only the floor pan stiffners not the main rails.

Born_disturbed · Post by **Born_disturbed** » Wed May 23, 2012 8:23 am

How much was it to get them landed here?

Zadkiel · Post by **Zadkiel** » Sun May 27, 2012 1:16 pm

Have you installed these now? How hard was it?

Angreal · Post by **Angreal** » Sat Jun 09, 2012 9:05 pm

The whole butterfly brace was 350US on a group buy special from FM. Shipping was the expensive bit

but wasn't too bad considering the volume and weight of the numerous items I got shipped over. About 200 for the shipping and 300 for the gst and customs clearance side of things but that was including a whole stack of other stuff.

Installation wasn't too bad. My rails were very bent and required quite a bit of "massaging" with a mallet. All up I think it was about 1-1.5 hrs installation with Cole who is very efficient.

As soon as I drove out I could feel the difference. The car feels tighter, speed bumps don't feel so bad with the whole thing stiffened out, going around corners feels nicer. I'd say the claims on the internet regarding the frame rails and butterfly brace are true.

I'll put photos of the installation up later.

Zadkiel · Post by **Zadkiel** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 12:26 pm

That would be great. The drilling of the holes seems like it might be the tricky bit.

Mad Kiwi · Post by **Mad Kiwi** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:06 am

FYI - I found installation of the rails very easy as well.

Took about an hour and a rubber hammer and a piece of 2x2 to ...ahem..."panelbeat" the rails back to some semblance of square....

Car drives nicely now, I wouldn't say a massive difference on road but the slight hint of shimmy I used to get at 105km is now completely gone.

Overall more a feeling of being more solid as opposed to stiff...car suddenly feels less rubbery, which is odd cause it didn't feel rubbery before..

Having the shimmy gone is a bit odd too, I suddenly discovered I was at 120 km / hour the other day when I subconsciusley thought it was 95 ish due to the smoothness of the ride...normally just under or over the 105 was the natural speed of cruise, seems I will have to be more carefull from now on...

Angreal · Post by **Angreal** » Mon Jul 02, 2012 10:21 pm

http://jimsgarage.wordpress.com/2012/01 ... -yourself/

This guy has photos and did a better writeup than me. The bit about drilling through a foot is correct and no, my foot is intact.

Is be very keen to drive your car mad kiwi to see the difference between rail and butterfly. I'm also very keen on the frog arms now but that'll have to wait for quite a while... Next up is the bushings on the suspension front

Donovan · Post by **Donovan** » Mon Jul 02, 2012 10:52 pm

I have got a set of frog arms, but haven't put them on as yet. Hopefully will get a chance to get to drive the car before and then shove them on to get an idea of the difference they make.

Flyin Miata Butterfly Brace

Flyin Miata Butterfly Brace

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