My responses are probably of general interest...
Unfortunately, the US cars seem to have a different VIN numberWhat has caught our eye is the dialogue on the list referring to what seems
to be a recognised "owners paranoia" re the shortnose crankshaft issue,
which has led us in turn to read what seems as excellent advice in
http://www.miata.net/garage/crankshaft.html together with its 2001 Addendum.
This says " ... if your Miata is a 1990 or 1991 with VIN 209446 or less,
you have a crankshaft with a smaller diameter nose."
sequence than the Japanese/NZ cars. I'm sure there is a cut-over
number that applies to our cars, but I haven't seen it publicised...
Yes, there certainly is some paranoia, at least state-side... I dont
think the issue has been publicised enough locally yet...
If you look at the drawings in that excellent crank-shaft write-up at
Miata.net, you'll notice that the two drawings of bolts are reasonably
easy to tell apart visually, even with no measuring tools.
Both bolts have 21mm hex's for heads, but the suspect bolt has a very
small flange around the base of the hex... essentially, it looks
"normal"... the newer better bolt has a very large flange around the
base of the bolt, making its head look like a panama hat in profile...
The head of the bolt is not quite in clear view... its inside the
middle of the lower pulley on the front of the engine... but you can
have a good look at it with a small mirror. I would suggest this is
the easiest and quickest way to tell which design you have.
If you have the big bolt, then you have the newer design crankshaft
and are in the clear...
The "Loc-tite Fix" can be found at this link...And where might you suggest we search for or read about what you describe as
the "Loctite Repair" .
http://www.miataforum.com/cgi-bin/ultim ... ic&f=27&t=
000018&p=
(you'll need to cut and paste both bits, my e-mail program doesn't
like long URLs)
Look near the bottom for a long post from "SoftTop"... He's an
employee of Loc-tite, and got their engineers to recommend the best
compounds for the job...
Good luck,
Fletch.
