So I decided I wanted to have a better understanding of how to do an alignment on a NA Miata.

And I just happen to have an NA Miata in my possession!

I found some decent writeup on the inter-web so I thought I'd put a POS Racing spin on the process and do it myself. (Don't try this at home)

Wanted to measure my camber on the car so I got a laser line and set it up on the car. The laser line unit I got allows me to setup one to get all the measurements on one side of the car. With the old school string method you have to set up a a string for the toe and a plumb bob setup for the caster.

First I set up the centerline of the front and rear including the 10mm track difference between the front and rear.

Now using a simple rise over run calculation I was able to determine my current toe & camber angle (No Driver in car)


Driver-side Rear
Toe = -.125" or .447 Deg
Camber = +.375" or +1.373 Deg

Driver-side Front
Toe = -.125" or .447 Deg
Camber = +.312" or +1.119 Deg

So it looks like the toe is in Mazda Specs and I plan to mess with the camber to see what happens.

But I have messed with the front camber using the plumb bob method but that was because negative camber just doesn't look cool.

So what do you kids think is this a decent TCB way of checking alignment on a Miata or have I missed something critical? I know I need to get the car level in the garage and plan to do that step as well before I get all crazy.


And once again please don't try this at home!