New brace bars were the 2nd modification on our 'Great Mk1 Giveaway' project car and you voted in your thousands for the Ultra Racing Upper & Lower Brace Bars
There are various ways you can stiffen the body of an MX5 to improve the handling – here’s how we fitted the Ultra Racing ones you chose for our Mk1 project car...
We’ve been upgrading a Mk1 with a selection of bits sourced through the MX5 Parts product catalogue to demonstrate just a few of the ways you can make your Mazda look and drive even better. Because, as good as the car is out of the box, there is always room for improvement.
Like many convertible cars earlier MX5s can suffer from a degree of flex in the body, this being a natural consequence of a bodyshell with a big hole cut out of the middle for soaking up the sunshine! On a bumpy road you might feel this as a shudder through the structure every now and then, the idea of body braces being they can both address this wobble and also provide a more rigid basis for the steering and suspension. This translates to more a more precise feeling through the turns and is especially important if you’re running stiffer suspension.
There’s a huge range of options in the MX5 Parts shop, with bars that bolt across the engine bay or luggage compartment and connect the suspension top mounts (commonly referred to as ‘strut braces’, even if the MX5 actually uses double wishbone suspension) to others that mount across the subframes underneath the car. These vary in complexity but the most popular among owners are the engine bay cross brace and lower bar that stiffens up the rear subframe, on the basis they both have a tangible result but also look cool. And for our project car you chose the Ultra Racing front and rear brace kit. Here’s how we fitted them.
Starting with the brace under the bonnet fitting is actually incredibly easy, and can be done simply by opening the bonnet and unscrewing the two nuts holding the suspension top mounts to the body. These are visible on the domes either side of the engine – just make sure the car is on the ground rather than jacked up as you don’t want the top mounts dropping out! With all four nuts removed you just align the studs with the slots in the brace and replace them. If your car has a turbo installation or some manner of non-standard induction kit there may be clearance issues but with the K&N filter on our project car there was plenty of space. Torque the nuts up correctly and you’re done.
At the back it’s a little more involved because you need to jack the car up, observing the usual safety precautions of chocking the unbraked front wheels and making sure there are axle stands to hold the car on the jacking points on the sills. For belt and braces safety (and if there’s space) slip a couple of wheels on their sides under the sills as well – you can remove the rear ones to do this if you don’t have spares.
Given you’re going to be working around the exhaust it’s probably sensible to do this with the car cold to avoid burning your knuckles. Our project car actually had an older brace already in place and getting the spanner to one end and ratchet drive to the other was a bit fiddly, a pre-emptive squirt of Halfords Shock And Unlock on the bolts making them easier to get going.
With the old brace removed fitting the new one required little more than inserting the supplied bolts into the sockets on each end, aligning these with the upper of the two holes each side of the subframe and then adding the washers and nuts to the other end. Again, finding the space for your hands to get the spanners in there can be a bit of a fiddle and you may come away with skinned knuckles but the Ultra Racing brace aligned perfectly with the mounting holes on the subframe and fitting wasn’t too taxing.
With everything nipped up it’s then just a case of dropping the car off its stands, firing it up and enjoying the improved rigidity of the body and – especially – through the steering wheel.
A recap what the three modification options were
- Upper IL Motorsport Front and Rear Superlight Brace Bars
- Lower IL Motorsport Front and Rear Brace Bars
- Ultra Racing Front UPPER and Rear LOWER brace bars
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