Hi, has anyone ever attempted to put a miata front subframe into a 1st gen? If not, why not? Is it purely because you don't get the freedom that a fc subframe gives you for a variety of motors?
I understand that people have dropped miata engines into their 1st gens, why didn't they use a miata subrame?
​​​​​​was it down to the height that the motor sits?
cheers

 

The advantage of the FC subframe swap is that the rails are the right width, the mounts don't need to be changed for an FC engine swap, the steering rack can attach to the factory location without major mods, the top hats bolt on with minimal work and the geometry out if the box is still usable. You also get big brakes and either 4x114 or 5x114 cheaply.

I didn't bother looking at Miata front suspension before I did my FC swap because I doubt any of the above is true for Miata, and if I wanted to swap something better than FC and add more fabrication to the mix, I'd choose 240sx anyway.

 

cool. Cheers for the reply!

 

The Miata uses double wishbone suspension where the FB and FC are both a McPherson strut. You would need to completely re work the strut tower and inner wheel well areas to accommodate the Miata's upper control arm, as well as the struts etc. It would be awesome, but the FC subframe does the job nicely and is easier to do

 

Cheers.
thanks for the positive replies.

 

Double Wishbone is doable, just takes a TON of work and really opens up a lot of opportunities. You'd be better off grafting in a FD front subframe so you get a 13B-REW to bolt in directly. Saves a lot of hassle. Shock towers have to be cut out, reinforcements made, and there's quite a bit of reworking to get it all perfect. Overall you get a better suspension package because Double Adjustable suspension is simply better in every way.

The FD has 5x114.3 bolt pattern and nice big bearings vs. a 4x100 bolt pattern and tiny bearings on a Miata. If you DO go this route however, Fris (Lucky7Racing) offers a Miata Subframe w/ Rotary Engine Mounts. Boom, done.

A 240sx front subframe is a downgrade from an FC. Just because it has more aftermarket support doesn't mean ****. Those cars and their crappy steering racks can stay to the drift world where precision isn't the name of the game, marketing is.

 

I wasn't interested so much for the aftermarket support, rather the A31 front subframe I have kicking about (240SX in the USA) happens to allow me to attach some R32 Skyline GTS-4 front hubs and brakes, which is of particular use when aiming for 4WD eventually

 

Ahh, now we're talkin'! Yes, that's a good reason right there.

 

Brilliant, thanks for the comments