Seeking Mazda5 experience and purchasing advice

[j-dog]

Hey all I am interested in buying a Mazda5. I have been seeing a few of them for sale around at pretty affordable prices most have roughly 100K miles. I am seriously considering it, but I wanted to reach out and see what peoples experience is with these model years? Seems like a lot of issues with some of the older years but seems like these later years after 2013 - 2015 are pretty good from a reliability stand point.

There is a 2015 with a manual transmission that is about $7k at 100K miles. Good deal or no? the manual transmission has me excited, I miss my old manual car. Anyways any input would be much appreciated! Thanks!

 

[ckappycycle]

I bought a 2013 a month or so ago with 84k. To sort of bring it back to where I want it before rotating into the fleet: Plugs needed changed but that is just normal service. The CV boots had split a year or so ago and since they didn't replace the boots, I am doing axels just to avoid doing stuff in the future. In the last year the rubber on the ball joints are starting to show cracks so I will get while doing the axels.
The valve cover gasket had also leaked which you may be able to see oil sitting in with the spark plugs if you pull a coil on 1 or 2.
Oh and throttle body needed cleaned since it doesn't have an idle air bypass, when the compressor engages the idle was a little slow to respond.
My 2012 Sienna's CVs boots are in good shape but that may just be garaged vs driveway.
I knew most of that stuff so I went in understanding about what I would have to do sooner or later. I just decided to do preventative vs run til fail.

If it weren't for my kids, I would have preferred the manual.

Cheers.