My First Miata Had a Misfire Hiding Behind a Bolt I Could Touch But Could Not Turn
My First Miata Had a Misfire Hiding Behind a Bolt I Could Touch But Could Not Turn
July 2026 · 7 min read
My NA in the garage the week it started missing. The fix turned out to be one bolt behind the engine.
If you own an NA or an NB, there is a bolt on your car right now that you can see, put a finger on, and cannot get a tool onto. You just have not met it yet.
Maybe it is the top starter bolt tucked under the intake. Maybe the CAS bolt an inch and a half off the firewall. For me it was the third coil pack bolt behind the valve cover, and it had been quietly killing my engine for months before I found it.
Here is what a nineteen-year-old convertible taught a twenty-four-year-old who had never turned a wrench.
The first car that was ever really mine developed a stutter
I bought it with money I saved bagging groceries and mowing lawns all summer. A 1997 Miata, black over tan, ninety-one thousand miles and a soft top with one small tear I patched myself. I was twenty-four and I had never been prouder of anything I owned.
I did not grow up turning wrenches. My dad leased sensible sedans and took them to the dealer, and I figured that was just how cars worked, until I bought one old enough to vote and found a whole world of people who keep these things alive themselves. The Miata people. Everything I know I learned from r/Miata and forum threads at two in the morning, because somebody has always already had your exact problem and written the fix down. The Miata is always the answer, they kept telling me.
So when it started to miss at idle and stumble on the throttle, I asked the forum before I threw parts at it. Within an hour three people told me the same thing. Check the coil pack bracket. On an NA the coil pack bolts to the back of the engine, tight against the firewall behind the valve cover, held by three bolts. The trouble is the third one. The previous owner had left it loose, the bracket had been buzzing for years, and that was quietly killing my spark.
The coil pack bracket lives back here, tight against the firewall behind the valve cover. You can see the bolt. You cannot swing a tool on it.
Every tool I owned, and what each one did
- Ratchet. No room behind the valve cover for the handle to even travel.
- Stubby ratchet. One wiggle and it hit the firewall.
- Combination wrench. Could not get it square on the shallow head with the firewall right there.
- Universal joint on an extension. Cammed off the head every time I loaded it.
- Wobble socket. All angle, no torque, which is exactly backward from what that bolt needed.
The shop wanted two to three hundred dollars to chase a misfire
I looked up what a shop would charge, and it was almost funny next to what the car cost me. Two or three hundred dollars in diagnosis and labor to fight the same bolt I was fighting, probably to leave it out anyway. And that is the cheap end of it. The forums are full of NA owners quoted five to seven hundred for a starter because the shop bills the access, not the wrench time, and the dealer number is higher still. On a car you bought for smiles per dollar, that is the whole point gone.
Nobody at a shop was ever going to care about that bracket the way I did. That is the whole reason I do this myself.
Most of an evening leaning over the fender at a bolt I could touch and could not turn.
Then a guy named Marcus dropped one reply in my thread
Marcus, twenty years in these cars, left a reply that was one line and a link. Stop trying to swing a tool in there, he said. You need a flat bar with a chain in it, and here is the only place that makes a real one. A week later a package showed up: a flat steel bar about the length of a ruler, a fixed bend in the middle and a square drive on each end.
Not a swivel, and not a wobble. I pressed my thumb into the drive and felt it turn, a roller chain sealed inside the steel, carrying the twist around the bend without giving an inch.
“The chain takes the bend for you.”
The bend holds solid and the chain carries the torque dead square to the socket, so it slides flat into a gap a socket cannot reach and turns with your own ratchet from out where your hand fits. Nothing in it flexes, so it does not slip off and round the head.
The sealed chain is the trick
A roller chain inside the steel body carries torque around the bend, so it never folds like a flex-head or walks like a u-joint.
Fits behind the valve cover
A slim flat bar slides into the gap by the firewall, up over the bellhousing, wherever a ratchet has no room to swing.
Your own sockets
Square drive on both ends takes the sockets and ratchet already in your kit. No proprietary anything.
It reaches. It is honest.
This solves access to a bolt you cannot get a tool on. It is the right geometry for a tight gap, not a miracle for a bolt rusted to nothing.
It only comes from one place
You will not find the real one at the parts store or on the tool truck. The maker sells it direct from their own site only, www.thesavary.com, shipped to your door. That is a fraction of one shop visit, and a rounding error next to a rounded-off bolt and a towed Miata.
What happened next
Flat enough to slide past the valve cover, and it turns from out where your hand actually fits.
Other owners who stopped leaving the bolt out
“The top starter bolt behind the intake is the one every NA guy dreads. I had been turning it a sixth at a time with a u-joint that kept popping off. This wound it out dead straight on the first try. Wish I had found it three cars ago.”
“CAS O-ring was weeping oil an inch and a half off the firewall and I could not get a wrench square on it. Did it in ten minutes without rounding a thing. I do all my own work and this lives in my kit now.”
“Bought my Miata at nineteen and learned everything from the forums. This got the coil pack bolt everybody tells you to just leave out. Runs dead smooth now. Best ninety bucks in the trunk.”
Back in the garage that night, the car running clean again, and one bolt I will never fight bare-handed again.
Get yours before the next hard bolt finds you
If you run an NA or an NB and you have ever laid over the fender cussing at a bolt you could touch and could not turn, the starter, the CAS, the coil pack, any of the ones this car hides on purpose, now you know there is something that reaches it.
Roadster Field Notes is a reader-supported publication. This is a first-person account from a Mazda Miata owner and reflects his personal experience. The Savary offset extension wrench is a hand tool designed to reach fasteners in tight, blind locations. It improves access to a bolt; it is not represented as a remedy for fasteners that are rusted or seized beyond normal service. Always follow proper service procedures and torque specifications. Results vary by car and condition.
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