Mazda 6i-Assistance sought for clutch and trans damage

[ctsmsedu]

Last week I had to replace the clutch and transmission on my son's 2006 Mazda 6i sedan. Car has 19K miles, and the repair bill was over 5K! This happened out of town, so I only have the dealer's input as to the cause. I have posted photos of the damage on my web gallery at http://gallery.mac.com/gbudde. To view the photos, click on the Mazda album. Username is mazda and password is mazda. Dealer's service department feels the clutch destroyed the pressure plate, and 2 fingers entered the trans where they actually punctured the aluminum housing, resulting in replacement of both trans and clutch. The clutch is apparently not under warranty, but I was told that the pressure plate was a covered item. The clutch appears to be intact. My son had no problems driving the car until late last week when he heard something pop. It then had trouble getting into gear and he noticed a fluid leak. He took it to the dealer the next day. I am suspicious that the pressure plate broke, and this lead to subsequent damage. I would appreciate hearing from forum members willing to look at the photos and offer their input. Thanks in advance!

 

[KaiyureGirl]

Pls help me.

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[FORZDA 1]

Last week I had to replace the clutch and transmission on my son's 2006 Mazda 6i sedan. Car has 19K miles, and the repair bill was over 5K! This happened out of town, so I only have the dealer's input as to the cause. I have posted photos of the damage on my web gallery at http://gallery.mac.com/gbudde. To view the photos, click on the Mazda album. Username is mazda and password is mazda. Dealer's service department feels the clutch destroyed the pressure plate, and 2 fingers entered the trans where they actually punctured the aluminum housing, resulting in replacement of both trans and clutch. The clutch is apparently not under warranty, but I was told that the pressure plate was a covered item. The clutch appears to be intact. My son had no problems driving the car until late last week when he heard something pop. It then had trouble getting into gear and he noticed a fluid leak. He took it to the dealer the next day. I am suspicious that the pressure plate broke, and this lead to subsequent damage. I would appreciate hearing from forum members willing to look at the photos and offer their input. Thanks in advance!

The pressure plate diaphram spring failed (unusual, but not completely unheard of) and the sections of spring material loosed bounced around inside the housing causing all the dents and dings in the housing and finally hit just right and punched through. The clutch disc itslef is heavily worn because when the pressure plate spring failed, the clutch slipped mightily. I'm kind of surprised your son didn't mention the slipping clutch before it punched thropugh the trans housing. The tire photos show they were just worn and did not show signs of repeated tire-smoking burnouts.

My opinion is this failure should be a warranty item. Yes the clutch is a wear item, but it didn't "wear out" and cause the problem. It appears that the pressure plate actually failed and caused the clutch disc and trans failure.

 

[ctsmsedu]

Thank you for taking the time to view the photos for me. You confirm what my mechanic told me. My son had an extremely hard time trying to drive the car (engine would race as the car would not go into gear properly). He took the car in ASAP and did inform the dealer. The were kind enough to post the photos, but wrote up a repair diagnosis stating that the clutch exploded due to a harsh engagement. The clutch certainly appears intact, and my son feels that much of the wear problems were due to his problems engaging the transmission once the pressure plate broke. My mechanic told me that the fingers could be shot around the transmission housing "like a bullet" causing the puncture. My son took the car in promptly, but the damage was done. I would just like Mazda to step up to the plate on this. Thanks again!