Check it out. Brought my Evo to a shop that specializes in Evo's for it's 60K maintenance. Nothing related to the timing belt has EVER been touched before. I bought the car brand new. I was standing right there as they were working on it. When they got to this particular bolt, the tech mentioned it was in there pretty good, soaked it with some PB and we let it sit for a while. Came back to it, and a couple turns later, the bracket snaps. Luckily, there happened to be a spare motor in the shop that we snagged a new bracket from. Upon closer inspection, the bolt had been cross threaded. Thank you Mitsu!!
Car is an Evo9. I'll get a manufacture date in a couple min when I got back out to the garage.

 

That's typical I have done 100's of evo 60k maintenace's and I have ran across this problem once in the blue! I always have one of those brackets laying around for a rainy day don't feel bad about it!

-nick

 

Yeah, I figured my car wasn't the ONLY one. lol I forgot to check the manu date. Figured if someone else had a car built around the same time, this post would be a heads up that they might run into an issue.
One of the techs had mentioned he had heard of one of the automated robots messing up when they were assembling the motors. Thanks for the TSB Mitsu!

 

What does that bracket look like and anyone know the Mitsu Part #?