My Miata is a local car and I am the 5th owner. All of the previous owners worked in the same department so I know them all and have the complete history of the car. The car was purchased off of the show room floor in 1990. She has only 140k miles and at 100k the crank was replaced by the dealership. I don’t know if the pistons were removed or not. I doubt if the head was removed. Certainly all of the bearings were replaced. In affect I got a new crank and a bottom job 40 k miles ago. I feel very fortunate. The car was in sad shape cosmetically when I purchased it but the price was right. I forked out the dough for a paint job and a new top plus brakes all the way around and new tires. This week the Cursed Water Plug and I became acquainted. I went a head and stripped the coolant fixtures from the rear of the head and began a coolant re route. All is well but slow going. I admire how you just fearlessly jumped in and did what was necessary. I expect now I will pull the valve cover and place anew seal. That paint job on yours looks great. Thanks for all your efforts. Producing a video and pushing it out is also very time consuming. Great job.
I'm glad I offered some insight! After the fix, I drew a straight line on both the crankbolt and pully so that I can visually check if the crank gear moves. But as of today, (about 1000 miles later)the car felt slower and I checked the crank, I noticed the lines don't align anymore X(. So now I start to think that my method doesnt work and would suggest that you stick to the traditional fix: apply loctite, use the crank holding tool, torque the bolt to spec and hope for the best! I suspect that the loctite didn't cure completely even after 48 hours/ front seal kept leaking, oil got into the loctite and dissolved it... Good luck!
I ordered the crankshaft holding tool a few days ago, just waiting for it and the parts to arrive. Good idea on marking them in a line to see if they got out of whack again
Hey Jimmy. Do you have a link for those slim fans you installed? I tried repairing my fans but they were just past it. I'd like to get some slimmer fans to allow for fitting a deeper aluminium radiator.
Thanks for the information! Though it wont fix my wobble as much as i want it to be but it will make my motor last so much more longer so i could atleast buy a long nose 1.6. Thanks once again!
Jimmy Has No Garage I am in the middle of replacing the Cursed Water Plug and while I’m at that the Cursed Cam/ Crank Angle Sensor O-ring and a coolant reroute. So I came to the conclusion to replace the valve cover gasket which is no where to be found under that name. I believe it is called an engine head cover gasket. Might as well clean up all the the little leaks. I’ve got other wheels so I can take my time. What a mess. I think this is called fun? I love my ‘90 NA but curse the way the engineers did a quick fix on the engine flip. Plugging that outlet with a rubber condom was just lazy.
i dont have a before video but you can see 13:45, my pully is still wobbling. A crank with no wobble should really look like the ac pully.... Short nose - small bolt shoulder and 4 slots in pulley Big nose - larger bolt shoulder and 8 slots in pulley Just avoid getting the short nose to save yourself from trouble:P
Hey Jimmy, thanks for your advices. By the way It happened to me inspecting a late-91 miata with a big nose crank recently. Mechanical wise, it seems alright, everything works just fine. However, the only issue I spotted, which may be significant, is that there are some tiny rust (sized around the pinky finger tip) appeared at wheel edge of the rocket panel. Is it gonna be hard to fix as it is located at the edge of the panel.
Jason Yau People say that when you can see rust from the outside, usually there’s a lot more that you can’t see🥶 unless the price is extremely great and you have the ability to cut and weld a panel to repair the rusted area I would suggest you to walk away....🧐🧐