ANOTHER Broken motor mount........ Its my turn

J

justa4banger

Member
:
2007 SILVER MS3
Start from the beginning.

After the first motor mount issue i took the time to check the bolt in question (back in feb) mine was red locktited and trq correctly. About 3 weeks ago i noticed a slight poping sound was cruising around and taking off. the sound seem to only happen initially when you loaded the car (ie taking off gear change). under hard acceleration you never heard it.

Yesterday (sat) i took the MS3 into the dealer for the popping sound under light load. They asked if i was ready to drop it off and i told them to wait till monday.
TODAY. i took off at one redlight and went thru 1-4 gear. Took off harsh but did not dump the clutch and never got wheel spin.
Caught the next light and just went on with my merry way. Went to the next light to make a left turn accellerated through 1st normally, got into 2nd and after well into 2nd i punched it. it started to go and then i heard this OUTSTANDING SOUND OF PARTS BREAKING AND s*** GOING BAD REAL QUICK.

Pulled the car over and low and behold ANOTHER Broken motor mount BOLT.
I'll see later this week what all is broke, but from my intial inspection i see broken DV valve , Fan, accessory pullies and belt, and a driver's side axle broken. i got some pics i'll post later and well since i have the next week off i'll be at the dealer taking lots of photos.

Car is a 12/06 production, i bought it in jan of 07, has 4224 miles and MOST of them was driven by my wife. Car has been the track once about 3 months back, and has been to the dyno once about 2 months back.

I have NEVER dumped the clutch in this car (whats the point its FWD). Besides i have a fast car, this ain't it.
We'll see what happens with mazda. My delaership is pretty cool, i'm buds with a service rep and parts manager. I just hope the mechanics are worth a s***.

i'll keep the board updated.

Funniest thing about all this, is i had a smile on my face the entire time. I just couldn't forget my last post in the other thread about the broken mount. i said:" So who's next :D"
 
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Do you have any mods done to the car?

Be sure to go through the correct process and get on the dealer because there are no know issues of this and I was standing at the tech comp looking at the Mazda site where he logged into. I was also there when he called and there were no reports of this happening before.
 
whitey4311 said:
Do you have any mods done to the car?

Be sure to go through the correct process and get on the dealer because there are no know issues of this and I was standing at the tech comp looking at the Mazda site where he logged into. I was also there when he called and there were no reports of this happening before.
Click to expand...

I'm quite sure Mazda knows of this.
http://www.msprotege.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2900197&postcount=5
http://www.msprotege.com/forum/showthread.php?t=123661483&page=6&highlight=motor+fell
http://www.msprotege.com/forum/showthread.php?t=123666792&page=4&highlight=motor+fell
http://www.msprotege.com/forum/showthread.php?t=123668865&page=4&highlight=motor+fell

Best of luck getting it patched up.
 
Drop in K&N air filter no other mods done.
We'll see what a mazda rep has to say. as for the dealer, i guess i have to say i'm lucky cause everyone seems cool for now. i called my buddy thats the parts manger to tell him what happened and he immediately called the service manager(buddy of mine) and he offered to get me a rental car today even though the dealer is closed on sunday. I declined the rental car today because i didn;t want to bother his weekend. i got plenty of cars but i'll be getting a rental tomorrow.

I will say this, the dealer now has a big issue on there hands due to the fact i only work 2 weeks a month. IF i get jerked around or i feel the dealer is not doing there job, i have no problem holdin a sign infront of the dealer explain to potenial customers how bad there service is. that would be bad for business given the amount of time off i have and nothing better to do with my time :D

What really kills me is i have a SVO with 380Wtrq sitting in a car that has the ORGINAL 22 year old motor mounts in it. hell i drag raced last night running 8.13's in the 1/8th on slicks and motor mounts look fine. Hell the svo has been to the track probably 50 passes and never had an issue. Those motors mounts are the same mounts for the N/A 4 cyl mustang that only makes 88 FLYWHEEL hp and haven't had a problem...So my question is WTF Mazda......
 
Trust me mazda has no recall on this and its not posted on the web site the mechanics use when looking up other "TSB's". I am not sure what that means but he allowed for me to stand in his shop while he looked this up and I got to poke around under the car while it was on the lift just to check things over the best I know how.

My MS3's build is 02-07 so I am not sure if that matters about engine mounts but I did have a loose right rear sway bar nut that I took off by hand.

The techs and dealers are not going to start taking batteries out and checkings things just because we tell them we heard of an issue. I tried and he sort of looked at the under side mount but wasnt going to pull the battery just because. It sux but he basically said its under warranty should anything happen even though I would much rather avoid the problem before it happens if at all.

Other then drive the car and listen for signs of "popping" and vibrations I cant say there is much choice on what to do for this until they see it necessary to recall the parts. That may not happen but if doesnt then we just deal with it when the time comes.

PS its too bad you didnt leave it there when you heard that noise. If it were me I woudlnt feel comfortable hearing that coming from the engine bay and still driving away from the dealer with it. Bet you wish you could do it all over but I wish you luck in the repair process.
 
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justa4banger said:
Start from the beginning.

After the first motor mount issue i took the time to check the bolt in question (back in feb) mine was red locktited and trq correctly. About 3 weeks ago i noticed a slight poping sound was cruising around and taking off. the sound seem to only happen initially when you loaded the car (ie taking off gear change). under hard acceleration you never heard it.

Yesterday (sat) i took the MS3 into the dealer for the popping sound under light load. They asked if i was ready to drop it off and i told them to wait till monday.
TODAY. i took off at one redlight and went thru 1-4 gear. Took off harsh but did not dump the clutch and never got wheel spin.
Caught the next light and just went on with my merry way. Went to the next light to make a left turn accellerated through 1st normally, got into 2nd and after well into 2nd i punched it. it started to go and then i heard this OUTSTANDING SOUND OF PARTS BREAKING AND s*** GOING BAD REAL QUICK.

Pulled the car over and low and behold ANOTHER Broken motor mount BOLT.
I'll see later this week what all is broke, but from my intial inspection i see broken DV valve , Fan, accessory pullies and belt, and a driver's side axle broken. i got some pics i'll post later and well since i have the next week off i'll be at the dealer taking lots of photos.

Car is a 12/06 production, i bought it in jan of 07, has 4224 miles and MOST of them was driven by my wife. Car has been the track once about 3 months back, and has been to the dyno once about 2 months back.

I have NEVER dumped the clutch in this car (whats the point its FWD). Besides i have a fast car, this ain't it.
We'll see what happens with mazda. My delaership is pretty cool, i'm buds with a service rep and parts manager. I just hope the mechanics are worth a s***.

i'll keep the board updated.

Funniest thing about all this, is i had a smile on my face the entire time. I just couldn't forget my last post in the other thread about the broken mount. i said:" So who's next :D"
Click to expand...


Sorry dude, this sux. Please report this to the NHTSA....If Mazda isn't going to recognize that this is a pretty serious problem, then someone needs to.
 
whitey4311 said:
Trust me mazda has no recall on this and its not posted on the web site the mechanics use when looking up other "TSB's". I am not sure what that means but he allowed for me to stand in his shop while he looked this up and I got to poke around under the car while it was on the lift just to check things over the best I know how.
Click to expand...

Oh, I believe you completely - I'm just saying that Mazda has to be aware of this problem. The number of documented cases keeps growing, and those $5000 + repair bills are being passed onto Mazda corporate. I will be surprised if a TSB does not come out of this. Yes, things like this are covered under warrenty, but no matter how competent the tech doing the repair work is, you are not going to get your car back in the same condition that it came from the factory, not to mention the incredible inconvenience factor. If I had an MS3 (and this is just me personally), I'd spend an afternoon pulling the bolt myself, adding loctite and torque things back to spec. If I held onto the car after the warrenty expired, I'd certainly swap out the inevitable upgraded aftermarket mount or a longer/stronger bolt with a safety-wired lock nut on the end of it (I wouldn't do this during the warrenty period if by chance something else happened and Mazda used this to deny a claim).
 
Where do we check for the broken, loose bolt? I looked at mine and it looked ok on the pass side. Can't see the drivers side too well.
 
Sorry to hear that about your car. I concur with Vixen. The screws must be put to Mazda in a big way concerning this. I guess I'm kinda preaching to the choir here. At the risk of sounding like a cynic, I think that Mazda isn't going to do a damn thing about this until the government forces them to.
 
I don't see how the bolt could come loose if it was torqued correctly. I checked mine once and it was tight. I now have over 12k miles (hard driving included) and no popping sound to speak of. Weird. Hope everything works out for you.
 
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I dont have a torque wrench to check it properly but how could I go about looking under the battery tray to check things over?

I am just not sure what to look for and if I the engine needs to be supported to tighten that bolt or not. I would like to remove it and put red loctite on ti but on the other hand I would just rather not mess with it either.

What do you guys think I should do as far as checking the bolt and how do you do this? My main concern being how to support the engine to do this. Also could I just use a ratchet and socket to tighten it by hand or is it crucial to have a certain amoutn of torque to it.

I know when I tightened my sway bar nut I didnt torque it but as long as it was tight as much as I could by hand I figured it was fine. The tech checked it and said it was fine since it called for about 40lbs and he took a box wrench to it and it felt good.

Maybe the best thing to do is look at it and if I suspect an issue pack ti up and bring it to the dealer rigth away. Then again I could just go off of any signs with vibration or noises when driving to indicate a loose bolt right?
 
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Yeah this is a tough situation. So people are having issues with this mount anywhere from 1000 miles to say 5000 mileson the car. So you take your car to the dealer and they replace it with the same kind of mount that broke in the 1st place. At this pace it seems to me the average owner will be having mazda replace the mount every 6 months to a year or a regular basis. I'd like to swap that mount out for a aftermarket heavier duty mount but am afraid if i do the dealership would void any other kind of warranty that i might need to do the aftermarket mount(especially if a side mount breaks or something). Any thoughts on this guys?
 
People do remember this the MOTOR MOUNT IS NOT THE PROBLEM. Its the motor mount BOLT. Well atleast the motor mount is not broken just the bolt. I do believe its a faulty design in how the motor is controled with all three mounts. to much movement is allowed IMO and this causes the issues to start.
I'll find out more today when i get to the dealer. I plan on staying there loing enough to get some good pics.
 
Maybe i should have left it there on Sat.............. ahh **** it it was fun driving on Sunday............. besides its got a warranty and hell its not my fast car. i honestly just bought this car for me and the wife to commute in. i just can't stand hella slow commuter cars. its one reason i never really planned on modding the car. waste of money IMO. I might get some mods after this though.......... On mazdas dime............
 
i'm still trying to wrap my head around this issue with the MS3
i know i don't drive one...but it sucks that so many people are first time mazda-buyers and are getting ****** in the ass with this bolt thing.

one thing i don't understand is the fact that this car doesn't come with crossmembers? am i wrong?

i just hope this stuff doens't happen at high speeds, when you can really hurt yopurself and others...

from now on i'm not driving behind a MS3 ever again. i don't want a bunch of metal ricocheting from the ground and getting on my eye...ok..i'm exagerating..

mazda must do something about this...otherwise little accidents like these will soon turn into headline news...i can just feel it. "Vehicle loses engine after Motor Mount bolt becomes loose on Interestate 95, 5 people die and 10 others injured from flying scrap metal. It has been reported that this has been a issue before but Mazda chose to not do recalls. It is now mandatory and all vehicles must be recalled. Mazda apologizes for the lost of lifes of these 5 people involved in the accident."
 
OUCH! Pretty blunt, but true Alejo....so, you won't be tailing me to the next meet then? LOL!

I'm coming up on my first oil change (which is free!) I'll ask the Service guys at Gunther to look into this and share any knowledge they have on this topic.

Updates to follow...


Gspeedn3
 
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