Hello all,
Thanks for accepting me into this forum. I am going to post this here as I am fairly new to Mazdaspeeds considering my wife is the owner of one for the time being. This will be a long post as my experience has not been a good one of adding this car to our collection.
2010 mazdaspeed 3 celestial blue, bought it with 145k miles and currently at 162k fair price (or so I thought at the time)
The first time I drove this car it was horrible, it would cut out erratically and vibrate like crazy at idle. My wife drove it and reported no issues other than vibration at idle which she was fine with. I did not recommend buying this car but she was really digging it and well she bought it. No issues with it for the first month until I bought some AWR motor mounts since the vibration at idle was annoying due to bad stock motor mounts. the motor mounts installed fine. First start up with AWR and the whole car was vibrating like crazy. My first thought was maybe its missing some sort of balancer, instead I got lower durometer bushings from AWR which one motor mount had cracked after a few weeks, so I welded it up. This only made the car somewhat manageable to drive. This would later prove to my ignorance/mazda engineering issues later. The car went a few months until another issue arose. I was driving the car on the freeway close to home when all of the sudden the car shut off. I coasted off the highway to a gas station. The car would crank but not fire. I towed it to the house where it would sit for the next few months while I would troubleshoot it when I would have time. The BAR fuse was blown and as soon as I would replace it and key the car on it would blow. I then proceeded to look for wires that were potentially grounding out. I checked every wire coming from the PCM harness ( hence why the car sat for so long and based on schematics I had tested grounds first then potential power wires that ran thru the BAR circuit) once i deemed wire harness ok I went thru each sensor on the circuit. MAP, MAF,CAM,CKP, TB,Pedal,Fuel Purge,Fuel pressure, etc. until finally the upstream O2 which according to the diagrams/schematics I had was not listed as a BAR circuit. I unplugged the O2 sensor put a new BAR fuse and turned the key on and it did not blow. cranked the car and boom it fired right up. Somehow the O2 sensor shorted internally and was going straight to ground the sensor from the outside looked fine. I then proceeded to order the OEM o2 sensor. the car made it about another month before the shifter arm at the transmission broke. I took it out and welded it and it proceeded to break 2 weeks later (not where I had welded it score 1 for me) I re-welded it and took off the shifter arm weight since I figured vibration probably the main culprit. The car ran fine again for about 1 month again until we started having having gear engagement issues. I took the cheaper route first since it was obviously clutch related. I replaced the slave cylinder first, that helped for a few weeks. Issue returned was getting some slight air bubbles in the line so I replaced the master cylinder(clutch) with a new one that leaked air right away, waited for a replacement installed and the still had no engagement. Ok its trans removal and clutch/Throwout bearing time. While I waited for clutch parts I dropped the transmission and oil pan to see if the engine still had the balance shaft installed which to my surprise it did have it. Took out trans and yup throwout bearing destroyed along with some flexplate fingers. I then looked at the abomination that Mazda calls a flywheel and to my horror it has way too many moving parts which were all bad. Mazda engineers suck. I bought a billet steel one that works with the stock clutch and installed everything and boom vibration is now gone. (+2 for me, mazda engineers -100,000) car now drives how it should, but only for a few more weeks. Next issue, fuel pump goes out(technically a lift pump) this happened on a road trip and am very thankful to a shop in San Antonio TX that specializes in speeds that had one in stock. This is where I am at now with the car. Fingers crossed that it can last us a while before I need to put money into it again. It could possibly be for sale in the near future tho.
Thanks for accepting me into this forum. I am going to post this here as I am fairly new to Mazdaspeeds considering my wife is the owner of one for the time being. This will be a long post as my experience has not been a good one of adding this car to our collection.
2010 mazdaspeed 3 celestial blue, bought it with 145k miles and currently at 162k fair price (or so I thought at the time)
The first time I drove this car it was horrible, it would cut out erratically and vibrate like crazy at idle. My wife drove it and reported no issues other than vibration at idle which she was fine with. I did not recommend buying this car but she was really digging it and well she bought it. No issues with it for the first month until I bought some AWR motor mounts since the vibration at idle was annoying due to bad stock motor mounts. the motor mounts installed fine. First start up with AWR and the whole car was vibrating like crazy. My first thought was maybe its missing some sort of balancer, instead I got lower durometer bushings from AWR which one motor mount had cracked after a few weeks, so I welded it up. This only made the car somewhat manageable to drive. This would later prove to my ignorance/mazda engineering issues later. The car went a few months until another issue arose. I was driving the car on the freeway close to home when all of the sudden the car shut off. I coasted off the highway to a gas station. The car would crank but not fire. I towed it to the house where it would sit for the next few months while I would troubleshoot it when I would have time. The BAR fuse was blown and as soon as I would replace it and key the car on it would blow. I then proceeded to look for wires that were potentially grounding out. I checked every wire coming from the PCM harness ( hence why the car sat for so long and based on schematics I had tested grounds first then potential power wires that ran thru the BAR circuit) once i deemed wire harness ok I went thru each sensor on the circuit. MAP, MAF,CAM,CKP, TB,Pedal,Fuel Purge,Fuel pressure, etc. until finally the upstream O2 which according to the diagrams/schematics I had was not listed as a BAR circuit. I unplugged the O2 sensor put a new BAR fuse and turned the key on and it did not blow. cranked the car and boom it fired right up. Somehow the O2 sensor shorted internally and was going straight to ground the sensor from the outside looked fine. I then proceeded to order the OEM o2 sensor. the car made it about another month before the shifter arm at the transmission broke. I took it out and welded it and it proceeded to break 2 weeks later (not where I had welded it score 1 for me) I re-welded it and took off the shifter arm weight since I figured vibration probably the main culprit. The car ran fine again for about 1 month again until we started having having gear engagement issues. I took the cheaper route first since it was obviously clutch related. I replaced the slave cylinder first, that helped for a few weeks. Issue returned was getting some slight air bubbles in the line so I replaced the master cylinder(clutch) with a new one that leaked air right away, waited for a replacement installed and the still had no engagement. Ok its trans removal and clutch/Throwout bearing time. While I waited for clutch parts I dropped the transmission and oil pan to see if the engine still had the balance shaft installed which to my surprise it did have it. Took out trans and yup throwout bearing destroyed along with some flexplate fingers. I then looked at the abomination that Mazda calls a flywheel and to my horror it has way too many moving parts which were all bad. Mazda engineers suck. I bought a billet steel one that works with the stock clutch and installed everything and boom vibration is now gone. (+2 for me, mazda engineers -100,000) car now drives how it should, but only for a few more weeks. Next issue, fuel pump goes out(technically a lift pump) this happened on a road trip and am very thankful to a shop in San Antonio TX that specializes in speeds that had one in stock. This is where I am at now with the car. Fingers crossed that it can last us a while before I need to put money into it again. It could possibly be for sale in the near future tho.
