What does it take to fix this loose clover weight?

 

Pretty sure the general consensus is to cut it off and not worry about it.

 

I believe this is relevant.

https://www.miataturbo.net/suspensio...flanges-66412/

 

Indeed, I've heard of a lot of folks, track rats included, doing without it. Obviously this goes against the mantra of "if it's not needed, then why did Mazda put it there?" to which I can only answer "I'm not a mechanical engineer."

I've never cut one off with the diff still in the car. I did remove it from the Torsen diff which I installed in my '92, but obviously the diff was in pieces on the bench at the time.

You can actually remove it (without cutting) with the diff in the car by unbolting the propshaft and then removing the large nut which holds the flange to the pinion shaft, but in the process of doing this, you screw up the preload on the shaft. There's a lengthy procedure in the manual for how to reset the preload with the diff still together, but I wouldn't trust myself to do it.

 

I own two diffs. Mine broke on my 4.1 torsen 1 and I cut it off. You could tell the difference in drivetrain vibration. A couple of months later I lost 2nd gear. Granted, that was after a ton of what I thought were relatively gentle tuning pulls. I ran the new tranny with the cloverleaf-less diff for a while. Had to do some other maintenance and popped my torsen 2 with cloverleaf on it. It is much smoother. Personally for primarily street driven miata, I think I'll keep running the cloverleaf. YMMV.

 

From what I've heard it was a NVH solution for the additional noise from the Torsen diffs. Most remove them without any negative effects that can be directly related to it.

 

I have had 2 diffs have these break loose. This is the procedure I used.

Remove 4 driveshaft nuts, and reposition drive shaft.
Mark position of pinion nut, relative to pinion shaft with paint pen or equivalent
Remove pinion nut and slide off pinion flange removing weight.
Reinstall flange and tighten nut to same position as marked.
note that you will need to fabricate a bar to hold the pinion in place or be really good/lucky in using an impact wrench.

Here is a link to someone who went 1 step further on a Jag.
Their diff was making noise, so they figured their preload was gone. (logic for this is discussed in link)
BTW, I have noticed the absence of preload on a recently purchased high mileage Miata diff.
Anyway there is some good information in this tutorial.
In Car diff preload adjustment

and here is the Miata specific write up
Miata Cloverleaf removal