Hoping to get some advice from those who know about Mazdas. I'm about to buy a 2014 mazda CX-5 for my daughter to take to college. I went to check out the car, which has 99K miles. Owner has had the car the past 7 years and says he’s pretty sure the spark plugs and coils are original. All in all seemed like a pretty good car in good condition. So I scanned it for codes with my Vpeak scanner using my app called 'car scanner'. It found many codes. I have screenshots if helpful, but to summarize, it had P0300, P0301, P0302, P005C(60), P0442, P1260, U3003(16), and C1031(54). The check engine light was not on and the owner told me the car has never had any issues that caused the check engine light to come on. I assume all these codes were temporary since the check engine light was not on. The status for each of those codes was “Test failed since last DTC clear”, and for codes P0442 and C1031, status also included the sentence “Test not completed during this operation cycle”.
So I cleared the codes, and agreed to come back the next day to see if they had returned after the owner had driven the car several times. He drove it 4-5 times before I returned to scan it again. This time I checked the codes before starting the engine and again after starting the engine, and none of them had returned except P1260, which apparently has something to do with the theft detection system. Regarding the other codes, even though they did not return as of yet, now I’m wondering if I should take it to a mechanic for a deeper checkout about the misfires, evap, and exhaust camshaft profile before buying it. I drove it hard around town and on the freeway, I gunned it many times, etc. I did not notice anything negative about the performance of the engine. Since one of those codes was for battery voltage, I looked closer at the battery. The battery has a ton of corrosion on the terminals, shows 12.45 volts when the engine is not running, so I tested it with my battery tester, which gave it score of 68% of health, and it’s 4-5 years old. I mention this since I’ve seen a bad battery cause all kinds of codes on one of my other cars.The owner said he has not had any service he’s aware of that would require that the battery be completely disconnected, which I understand might cause some codes to appear.
Anyway, anyone has an opinion, I’d love to hear it. Thank you in advance!!
So I cleared the codes, and agreed to come back the next day to see if they had returned after the owner had driven the car several times. He drove it 4-5 times before I returned to scan it again. This time I checked the codes before starting the engine and again after starting the engine, and none of them had returned except P1260, which apparently has something to do with the theft detection system. Regarding the other codes, even though they did not return as of yet, now I’m wondering if I should take it to a mechanic for a deeper checkout about the misfires, evap, and exhaust camshaft profile before buying it. I drove it hard around town and on the freeway, I gunned it many times, etc. I did not notice anything negative about the performance of the engine. Since one of those codes was for battery voltage, I looked closer at the battery. The battery has a ton of corrosion on the terminals, shows 12.45 volts when the engine is not running, so I tested it with my battery tester, which gave it score of 68% of health, and it’s 4-5 years old. I mention this since I’ve seen a bad battery cause all kinds of codes on one of my other cars.The owner said he has not had any service he’s aware of that would require that the battery be completely disconnected, which I understand might cause some codes to appear.
Anyway, anyone has an opinion, I’d love to hear it. Thank you in advance!!
