'99 Miata - Not My Problem

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Thanks, that's what I thought, but it's always better to ask that just assume I know the answer. 

Here are the original instructions, developed by some Loctite engineers: https://www.miata.net/garage/hsue/crank/loctite_2.htm

In reply to wae :

Glad you're enjoying it. Here's to hoping your job has no drama and follows the book. 

Started the day by ripping the installation flange off the sleeve. Not sure it needed it, but now it's gone, and everything is installed. 

Then I started on the crank. This is the origional bolt. Who wants to guess at what that sparkly brown stuff is? 

This car has seen more wrenches than a quick lube, so no telling when or how it got there, but I suspect that may be why it had trouble holding torque. I made up a nice surgical drape out of a ziploc bag to protect the front mainseal from the onslaught of brake cleaner that I subjected the crank to. Worked well. Lots of brake cleaner, lots of q-tips, lots of compressed air, threading the good new bolt in about 4800 times to break up the stuff inside and I'm finally confident that we have nice clean dry threads. 

Always an adventure. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

There's a joke to be said about showing that motor a good time. 
 

But I'll stop at that, and just say it all looks awesome! except the old bolt...that sucks... but this couple months is making me excited to have it back and do dumb fun stuff with the car.....now back to searching for a roll bar.... 

In reply to spacecadet :

I had to type that post up about four times before I figured out how to use phrases other than "I scrubbed that hole until it was shiny" and the like. 

One last question for the day, the hose that attaches to the intake and heads off to the brake booster, this little guy. 

The end was ripped. I cut the ripped part off and I can probably heat it up with a heat gun and make it pliable enough to get it on, but that's not really the proper way to do it. Everywhere I can find it online says that it's NLA from Mazda. Is there an aftermarket solution? 

The best I can tell, that booster hose is pn NC1043481 and is indeed NLA.

I don't know of an aftermarket solution, although it's really just a piece of hose with some reinforcement. I think trimming and heating it is legit.

Keith Tanner said:

I don't know of an aftermarket solution, although it's really just a piece of hose with some reinforcement. I think trimming and heating it is legit.

I have done that and not had issues, and also just used some reinforced hose of the proper diameter, also without issues.

Just read the last eight pages.  Is it possible the outer ring of the balancer has slipped due to a failing rubber ring between the inner and outer parts?  That is a failure point on many cars using balancers with rubber between the two pieces.  It would be easy to compare against a good known balancer showing the proper relationship between the Woodruff slot and the timing marks.

You can usually spot that by setting the car to TDC and checking the timing mark on the pulley. Should line up with 0, anything else is a failure. I once had a Miata on the lift with a failed damper and you could watch the timing mark gradually moving around the pulley.

Don't think it would affect an NB at all, though. They're timed by a non-adjustable wheel that's attached to the inner part of the damper. The copper paste on the crank bolt is very likely the cause of all this.

This stuff came in the mail. 

Here is the timing pulley with the key and the 660 metal filler stuff next to it. The keyway damage really is small compared to a lot of the pictures I've seen. They said loctite everywhere metal touches metal, so that's what I did when I slid the timing gear on. 

Then the pulley boss with a picture confirming that I swear to god I used loctite on a clean new bolt. Now who can tell me what's wrong with this picture? 

Luckily I thought about what was going on and I pulled the boss back off and put the timing belt on before I put the bolt in and tightened it down. That was a close one. 

And now it gets to sit and cure over the weekend while I go play with race car stuff. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

But let's say that the key broke and the pulley boss which uses the pin to index the timing trigger wheel could rotate separately from the crank. Now THAT would cause a problem. 

Edit: and now I go back to the first pictures in this post. I was using the timing marks on the balancer, which bolts to the pulley boss to assume that timing was 8 teeth off. But now I know that the pulley boss was moving in relation to to the crank which means that the timing probably wasn't off at all, just the balancer and timing trigger wheel. Which is kind of awesome. 

It would! But that's a different failure than the rubber in the damper, which DOES happen. Usually you find out about it when you set the timing on an NA and the car just doesn't work right because you didn't set it where you thought you did. On an NB, you may never find out because you can't set the timing. Which explains why this doesn't seem to happen to NBs.

Yeah, your problem was incorrect ignition timing due to the timing wheel having rotated relative to the crank. Not one we see very often, really.

Keith, my concern was only the crank timing mark position relative to the cam marks was established.  TDC was not.

mazdeuce - Seth said:

One last question for the day, the hose that attaches to the intake and heads off to the brake booster, this little guy. 

The end was ripped. I cut the ripped part off and I can probably heat it up with a heat gun and make it pliable enough to get it on, but that's not really the proper way to do it. Everywhere I can find it online says that it's NLA from Mazda. Is there an aftermarket solution? 

On my not-Miata, the booster hose has a built-in check valve (and even a label on the hose warning about it). From the outside it looks like just a regular hose. The check valve is to retain some amount of brake boost even if the engine dies. Again, not sure if it applies to a Miata, but perhaps check into it before putting in a regular section of hose.

Jerry From LA said:

Keith, my concern was only the crank timing mark position relative to the cam marks was established.  TDC was not.

If you're assembling a motor with a failed damper and you use the timing mark to determine TDC, you could get yourself in trouble with the cam timing. But it would only be if it was failed at the time of assembly, and honestly that's more effort than using the cast notch in the timing belt gear. Having it fail later wouldn't do anything.

The check valve for the Miata booster is in the hose that's attached directly to the booster - which makes sense, you don't want a cracked hose upstream to dump your vacuum. It's a hard spot in the hose. The one in the picture in the foreground is just a normal hose.

It runs. It runs well with no codes. The plastic timing covers are all kinds of messed up which means I have to take a bunch of stuff back apart to fix that. The alternator is trying to seize or light itself on fire, whichever comes first, and probably a bunch of other stuff that needs to be attended to. But dammit, it runs.

The covers are always messed up.

Still, they were too messed up for me to want to deal with when I was a dozen bolts away from seeing if the motor still worked. I think I can sort them out, but I need a day when I can be patient and make the new seals that I bought work with the old covers. More pictures coming, but at this point it pretty much looks like an assembled NB Miata which is pretty anticlimactic all things considered. 

Edit: and on the alternator. I'm 99% sure the bushing is trying to seize and light itself on fire. Any good reason it would do that spontaneously? Word from spacecadet is that it was fine when the car died. 

You cleaned the lubricating dort out. Done it to myself multiple times. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

The Miata alternators seem to explode randomly. This season I drove two hours to an autocross, car was fine all the way out there. Me and my co-driver tossed our helmets in and drove over to tech inspection,still fine. Got it tech inspected and drove it back to our spot in the grid and as I parked it, it started sounding like it had a gnarly rod knock. Ended up parking it for the event, driving something else, limping it two hours home while expecting the rods to exit the block at any time. After checking it at home, the bearings were absolutely destroyed without any warning signs.

As a side note, I have a alternator kicking around that came off my junkyard '00 engine. No clue if it's any good as far as charging but it turns freely and doesn't make any bad noises. I can't use it because, that alternator has no voltage regulator (ECM handles it) and the '90 needs an internally-regulated alternator.

So Rock Auto shows a replacement bearing for the alternator here.

It is worth trying to see if I can replace it? Looks like whole alternators are $100 or so. 

Or are you offering for me to send you money in exchange for your alternator Nick? 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Price of shipping and it's yours if you want it. I've got no use for it and its just taking up space

In reply to NickD :

Awesome. Let me yank the old one tomorrow to confirm and I'll send you a PM. spacecadet owes you a beer.