Welcome back, thread.
Yesterday's job was to replace the power steering belt, it was cracked and dicky and made a little squeal when I cranked the wheel on a cold engine.
Off comes the intake plumbing. Mazda must have added this thing on the 1.8L air flow meter to try and smooth out turbulence that comes from the metering plate. Since replacing the 80s-style overcomplicated metering-plate AFM with a straight pipe, cone filter and MAP produces way more horsepower maybe they should have just done that instead.
At first I thought the PO might have jammed one of those eBay turbonators on this thing.
New Gates belt...
Nope, I got the wrong belt from RockAuto! (old above, new below)
This one (Gates K040340) appears to be for a 90-93 with PS but not AC, based on a forum post. RockAuto listed it under 97 which is totally wrong.
I of course did not notice that the new belt was so much longer until I bent the already-questionable tensioner bolt. Luckily I know people who have backyards full of de-power-steering-pumped Miatas, so it was only a matter of waiting until they were free to scoop up their long-assay cheese bolt gold.
Quick trip to Can Tire netted me the
correct belt, just at a large integer multiple of what I paid for the Gates..
While I was waiting on a new tensioner bolt, I decided to put in the GarageStar rad cover I bought last winter:
And that's how you turn a 45 minute power steering belt change into a four plus hour ordeal.