ClubRoadster.net banner

DP6061 tophats

7K views 33 replies 20 participants last post by  Max_Power 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
I've had these things installed for a few weeks now and feel ready to make a review. I'll spoil it for those who don't want to read: I'm not removing these tophats. All these pix are in my project thread, but the tophats rock so much that I wanted to make a special thread for them here.



TEIN pillowball upper mount (p/u mount) is installed on the rear. This gives you ~10mm extra shock travel over stock NB tophats. They look pretty, and they control the lateral travel well. But they're NOTHING compared to the dp6061 hats that give you TWO INCHES of extra shock travel.


Out of the box: I got 2 tophats, a bunch of washers, and 4 inserts for the spherical bushings to match the width of my shock shaft. Having NB TEIN HAs, I needed the smaller inserts. They fit both the shock shaft and the bushings perfectly. Zero tolerance I think the install notes called them? Good name.



The directions call for something to build up the threaded area to allow the nut to properly tighten down the tophat. I had about 1/2" of space between the bottom of the threads and the top of the tophat. I was able to make up this space with the included washers, but I wasn't totally in love with that. I dug through my box of suspension parts and found some spare TEIN collars (the big thing between the hat and the nut) to make up the space. It looks to limit the lateral movement, but that's not actually so. I put this all together without springs and jacked up the suspension. At full compression, the collar doesn't hit the side of the tophat hole.



Kinda difficult to see what's going on here. The green circle shows the frame making contact with the upper a-arm. This happens before the TEIN bumpstop even makes contact. I blame my NB HA kit. Not a lot of guys running them on an NA. Anyways, something needed to be done.



I had some new NB bumpstops in my box of suspension goodies. I trimmed off the first segment and installed them in place of the TEIN bumps. TEIN bumper is in my hand. The NB one is installed. Also, this is the front NB bumpstop. I didn't have a new set of rears, but they're pretty similar anyway. Fronts are stiffer and tan. Rears are softer and pink. I wanted some stiffness to help combat frame hits.



The NB stoppers make contact before the frame does and require a good squish. In 3 weeks of driving over some pretty crappy roads, I've never heard or felt any suspension slamming of frame contact in the rear, so I'm fairly confident that my longer bumpstops are effective. The NB bumper is visible peaking out in this shot.



This is what zero spring pre-load looks like. The collars are ALL the way down at the bottom. This gave me 10.5" ride height in the rear. I applied some preload to raise that by .75". So at 11.75", I've got about as much travel as I would have at 14" ride height with the TEIN tophats.


Overall, these are a great product. I'd recommend them to anyone. I've never had a more comfortable ride in a lowered Miata. http://www.dp6061.com
 
See less See more
6
#3 ·
Of course!


Rear ride height in starting position.



Front ride height after a little lowering.



Front/rear: 11.5"/11.25" measured lip to hub center. The fender gap is perfect front and rear. Very even with this height.

and



This last one shows off the ride height pretty well.
 
#5 ·
The one I'm holding in my hand is the TEIN bumpstop. The one on the shock is the NB bump with the first segment cut off. The first segment does almost nothing and is completely hollow. It's also about the size of the first segment on the TEIN bumper. I'll update the post to clear this up. :)

And the NB bumper is visible on the shot peeking out of the shock top. From the same angle, I could barely see the TEIN bumpstop in there, so I didn't photograph it. doh.
 
#9 ·
Would I need a spring compressor to remove the pillow mounts on the flex's if I were to replace them with dans tophats? I'm looking at dropping my car to 12.5" (ish) f/r so would I need the extra travel or could I do without till I can get a set?
 
#13 ·
HA! Doh. Thanks for the fix.

Spring compressor: Highly doubted. Just unscrew the spring mounts. I was able to mount them on my HAs with no preload and then I added from there. No compressor necessary. Pretty sure the FLEX has a longer threaded area than the HAs.
 
#18 ·
I figured I wouldn't have to use a compressor, but I wanted to make sure.
 
#17 ·
I'll be using some spec miata NA shocks and GC's with some fairly stiff rates(430/250), if I plan to only go down to 12" hub-fender (when compressed/on the ground) would these be any benefit or are these meant only for the guys that go way low?
 
#21 ·
Well I'll see how the flex's do without the hats first and see if I really need them. I figure at a 12.5-ish ride hight I should be fine, but it wouldn't hurt to have them and be better safe than sorry.
 
#24 ·
I think the stance have something similar built into their rear coils, but I could be wrong
 
#29 ·
They look really good!
The only thing that I don't like is that the spring is directly in contact with the top hat's flat part (essentially mounted on the car) instead on a spherical mount.



 
#32 ·
They look really good!
The only thing that I don't like is that the spring is directly in contact with the top hat's flat part (essentially mounted on the car) instead on a spherical mount.




Chris,

You will usually see that kind of mount on a McPerson strut as the shock has to rotate and instead of the spring wearing down the area it sits on they are made seporate so the shock can turn without the spring doing so. In the case of the photos above the reason those are like that is they're using a "generic" shock that need to work for several applications so by seporating them they can use different tophats without having re redesign the spring seat area every time.

All in All revlimiter is correct the less distance you have from where the tophats meet the car to where the spring sits the more travel you gain.

Dan
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top