Shock recommendation for a street driven car.

[—Martin—]

Stock NB suspension will raise an NA a bit.

[BoBo]

I have been looking at Illuminas as well.

The GR-2's or Illuminas are fine even Koni sports, but stay away from Koni STR. The valving on the STR's are OK but the shock itself doesn't last. I bought a new set a while back and one of the shocks were blown upon delivery, leaking inside the box and the rest failed under 3000 miles. Keep in mind I was using stock springs under normal driving. I'm not here to offend anyone I'm just speaking out of experience. Maybe I had a bad batch but I received one new Koni STR shock to replace the blown one, that same shock failed after 3 months of driving.

I bought a set of Bilstein HD and paired it with stock springs. 20k miles later it was still in great shape under commute, track, and hard driving. Soon after that, I paired it with FM springs and never looked back. It's been about 10k miles now with the FM springs and the Billie's are still dependable.

[BoBo]

This one I believe was under 3k miles.

[— Dandy —]

Just from being around the Miata community, reading, and hearing about the experiences from others, here is a quick guide to proven Miata shock set ups:

with stock and mild aftermarket springs
Koni Sport
Tokico Illumina

for higher spring rates
Bilstein Heavy Duty

inexpensive coilovers
Flyin' Miata V-MAXX

Premium coilovers
949Racing SuperMiata XIDA
Fat Cat Motorsports Elite

This is certainly not a complete list but all of these set-ups listed have been used with satisfactory results on many, many NA's and NB's. They are all mentioned frequently in Miata discussions with positive feedback and very little negativity in the categories listed.

[Fishbulb]

Excellent, thank you!