[oldE]

When I bought my '90 Miata from a friend and neighbour, I knew it had the small nose crank problem and prepared to do the fix. To determine TDC on #1, I removed the spark plug and was not pleased to find it was cross threaded , but luckily it was only in a turn or two. I asked my friend and he said he had taken it to the dealer when it wasn't running right . They changed the plugs, adjusted the idle mixture and finally told him it needed a new crank.
I understand a dealership wants no part of doing the Locktite fix on a car, but they should know how to put in a spark plug. I took the plug in to the service manager and he tried to tell me some other garage had worked on the car. I pointed out the car had a complete set of new plugs but only three had the crush washers engaged and their work order listed the spark plug change.
In all, it was my gain, as I was able to do the fix on the end of the crank nose, chase the threads in the head, re-set the idle mixture and drove the car for six years and another 30K miles.
To be fair, when I was re-doing the rear brakes on that car a few years later, and was trying to source caliper rebuild kits, the same service manager pointed out he could sell me remanufactured calipers for about the same price as all the components required to rebuild the calipers.

Best
Les