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It seems that there was a bit of a problem with 1999-2000 engines in the USA market cars. There were quite a few #4 thrust bearing failures that lead to engine rebuild or replacement if not caught very early. It seems Mazda got a bad batch of thrust bearings that weren't picked up during engine assembly.

Historians, did this known problem appear in the Australian market cars

JBT wrote:It seems that there was a bit of a problem with 1999-2000 engines in the USA market cars. There were quite a few #4 thrust bearing failures that lead to engine rebuild or replacement if not caught very early. It seems Mazda got a bad batch of thrust bearings that weren't picked up during engine assembly.

Historians, did this known problem appear in the Australian market cars

Did a bit of research at the time of buying my first MX-5 (Evo Gold 2000). The engine numbers the yanks had were nothing like ours. It was said ours came from a different plant, but I couldn't confirm this. There were rumours of one local one with that problem, but, again, I couldn't confirm them.

The lack of a single confirmed local occurence of the famous number 4 problem made me feel relatively secure. However, I did the dial gauge check anyway. No probs and 150,000 km out of that car.

Cheers,
Alf

Thanks Alf.

Thanks Chris

I haven't heard of any of here in the West yet.

But since we have an early NB8A (in the first 100) i've been nervous about it.