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- South Carolina
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- 12 MZ5 13 CX-5
It's not that bad. After the first time doing it, it's a lot easier, because you know what you're doing! I will admit the very first time did suck though.
What have you done to your Mazda5 today?
- Thread starter Rockin03mp5
- Start date
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- FC, FE, Mazda5
At least you weren't trying to replace the blower motor! I had to do that on my 2006 and it was awful. Buried really high up under the dash up against the firewall, it required laying upside-down in the drivers side footwell trying to fit my arms up to get to fasteners by feel since there was room to either see or act, but not both at the same time. On the 2006, the HU wasn't bad to get to, but I haven't tried on the 2012 yet.
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- FC, FE, Mazda5
Yea, I wasn't expecting that result! I wasn't even looking at the ear since I was focusing on whether the bearing itself was moving while cranking on the screw. Oddly, once I got the knuckle off the car (even though the damage was done), some work with the sledge got the bearing moving fairly easily, so I don't really know what went wrong with the puller.
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- South Carolina
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- 12 MZ5 13 CX-5
Last time I did front bearings, I pulled the knuckle off of the car and pressed them off and on. And now that I see what happened to you, that will be the only way I do it from now on, too!
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- FC, FE, Mazda5
I finally got the correct new knuckle, and it all went together nice and quickly, only a couple weeks behind schedule. I also picked up some LED interior lights and a white strip of LEDs to add to the rear ceiling trim inspired by hleboklop a few posts up. The strip I got unfortunately wasn't sealed up, so I had to lay a nice thick bead of hot glue over it to protect & insulate the surface mount components. It really helps to illuminate the hatch area.
juniorsenior
Banned
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- Mazda 5
Not sure what you were doing, but you 100% absolutely-do-not need to remove the drive shafts from the hubs to remove the struts. Yes, you may have found other issues as a result of taking more apart, but I question whether all of it was necessary if you had done it properly in the first place.A few weeks ago I went around and replaced all the shocks/struts & mounts since one was definitely blown and leaking and they all felt a bit on the sloppy side - it looks like they were all still OEM parts at ~122k miles. Anyway, they all got replaced with Bilstein B4 shocks - slightly stiffer than new OEM but still appropriate for stock spring rates & ride height. They were notably stiffer and more controlled than the worn out shocks that were there before, but still provide a good ride. At the same time, I greased up the bottoms of the front springs and both sides of the rears where there was a little bit of abrasion, slid some fuel injection hose over a coil, and reinstalled into new mounts. This should better protect the ends of the springs and slightly increase the ride height (maybe 1/4" in front, 1/2" in back with two hoses) so that the van is a little more level when loaded up with a cargo carrier hanging off the rear rack.
After doing all of that, the driver's side front wheel bearing got loose (I suspect I may have caused that since I had to remove the driveshafts from the hubs to rebuild the struts on the car), but this time the drive axle nut needed to be cut off the drive axle - it had completely seized up. Then, when using one of the on-car wheel bearing pullers that you rent from auto parts stores, the wheel bearing was so rusted in place that the puller broke one of the caliper mounting ears off of the suspension knuckle!
So, that's where she sits now, waiting for a new knuckle from Mazda (car-part.com didn't have any within 100 miles to pick up)
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- FC, FE, Mazda5
Well... If I were just removing & replacing the strut & spring assembly as a whole, I agree, I wouldn't have to. That isn't quite what I was doing though...
To avoid messing around with spring compressors (those things scare me a bit), I was using a jack under the lower control arm and the knuckle to gradually relieve the spring compression to disassemble it from the worn out strut (with the jack & LCA constraining the bottom end of the strut so it wouldn't fly apart when unscrewing the nut on the shock shaft), and then doing the reverse using the jack to re-compress the spring until the shock shaft pokes through the upper mount and I can get the nut onto it. This is what I meant by "rebuilding the struts on the car". On some cars (my previous Saab 9-3's for example), this can all be done without removing the driveshafts (my guess is the MZ5 springs are softer but longer than the 9-3's, therefore the uncompressed length is significantly longer). Anyway, to get enough travel on the van I had to remove the drive axle nut and allow the drive axle to slide in the splines of the hub. The drive axle didn't actually need to be removed from the hub completely.
I actually didn't do this at first on the passenger's side, and it pulled the inner CV joint apart internally and pulled that joint off of the intermediate shaft, so I then had to remove and rebuild it. To avoid that on the driver's side I pre-emptively removed the nut to allow it to slide, but may have hastened the wheel bearing issue. So... long story short, I tried to take a short-cut rebuilding the struts on the car and it resulted in having to rebuild one of the axles, replace a wheel bearing, then replace a whole steering knuckle...
To avoid messing around with spring compressors (those things scare me a bit), I was using a jack under the lower control arm and the knuckle to gradually relieve the spring compression to disassemble it from the worn out strut (with the jack & LCA constraining the bottom end of the strut so it wouldn't fly apart when unscrewing the nut on the shock shaft), and then doing the reverse using the jack to re-compress the spring until the shock shaft pokes through the upper mount and I can get the nut onto it. This is what I meant by "rebuilding the struts on the car". On some cars (my previous Saab 9-3's for example), this can all be done without removing the driveshafts (my guess is the MZ5 springs are softer but longer than the 9-3's, therefore the uncompressed length is significantly longer). Anyway, to get enough travel on the van I had to remove the drive axle nut and allow the drive axle to slide in the splines of the hub. The drive axle didn't actually need to be removed from the hub completely.
I actually didn't do this at first on the passenger's side, and it pulled the inner CV joint apart internally and pulled that joint off of the intermediate shaft, so I then had to remove and rebuild it. To avoid that on the driver's side I pre-emptively removed the nut to allow it to slide, but may have hastened the wheel bearing issue. So... long story short, I tried to take a short-cut rebuilding the struts on the car and it resulted in having to rebuild one of the axles, replace a wheel bearing, then replace a whole steering knuckle...
juniorsenior
Banned
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- Mazda 5
I never realized people would do it that way. Spring compressors are literally free to borrow from any auto parts store. I use spring compressors. Just be careful and double check where the hooks are placed.
And ouch! regarding all the extra labor and parts you had to put into it
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- FC, FE, Mazda5
Yea, I have a set of spring compressors in the garage too, so it's not about the tool availability. I just really don't like using them. Not only the risk of it slipping or coming off of the compressed spring, but the times I've used them they've chewed up the corrosion-prevention coating on the springs, and I've had to replace at least 6 springs (between my old rusty '06 mazda5, one of my 9-3's, and my sister-in-law's car) due to rust breaking a coil or two off.
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- FC, FE, Mazda5
Yea, those are a good option, but they didn't offer them with the Bilstein B4's that I wanted to use unfortunately.
juniorsenior
Banned
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- Mazda 5
And the springs are not oem quality
I don't quite understand what makes you think so. Could you please elaborate?
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- South Carolina
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- 12 MZ5 13 CX-5
I've tried to use both on both Honda and Mazda. Moog simply doesn't fit, and Monroe squeaks and makes it ride like a truck. I thought it was just me, and then I saw this.
youtu.be
MOOG Sucks
As you can probably tell in this video, I’m pretty mad at MOOG. Normally I wouldn’t call out a company like this, but enough is enough. If it was one part th...
youtu.be
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- FC, FE, Mazda5
I've used Moog for bushings, suspension arms, strut mounts etc before on the MZ5 and my Saabs, and the only issues I had was that the front strut-top bearings on the Saabs would tend to start sticking a bit after a few track days so you could hear a spring-uncoiling noise when turning the steering wheel occasionally, and the front sway-bar links would wear out and become loose. However, lots of high cornering loads and going over the corner edging will beat up plenty of components more rapidly than anticipated, and I just got good at changing those bearings out (of course using the spring de-compression with the jack technique) once a year or so, depending on the number of track days. For spirited DD duty, I haven't had an issue with Moog. No experience with Monroe though.
