yay for check-engine light

[PeteyBoy3K]

Anyone wanna help me play armchair code-reader?

Yesterday, after getting the Mazda3 5-door washed, I was coming back from the grocery store and got a late christmas present: a solid Check-engine-light.

As far as I can tell: here are the symptoms:

- Rough warm idle: When I come to a stop, the car will run at about 750 RPMs but gradually over ten seconds it will waver back and forth between 750 and 690 and then drop to 600 and "shudder" before shooting back up to 800. This results in you sitting there chatting or zoning at a stop light and then suddenly feeling the car jiggle.

- Just got 45K service done (filters -n- flush -n- stuff)

- before service, car was much worse about occasional hesitation (I figured I had sucked a few leaves into the air filter since it had been behaving much better between the 45K and now...)

- at about 40K, had to have the intake replaced because something was busted that caused a loud tick that was connected to the engine speed (I thought it was a stuck valve, apparently it was some part of the tuba works)

I'm taking it in tomorrow (yay, 5000 more miles of warranty). I get to drive a rent a focus (wheeee!) but until then, anyone wanna weigh in on what the problem could be?

 

[mazda3zoom]

i have no idea what the problem is, but you better make sure that they get all the bugs outta that car before your warrenty is up. I blew my motor less then 1000 miles outta warrenty and mazda offered NO assistance at all. MAKE them fix everything.

 

[Rush24]

My car does the same thing sometimes...at a dead stop it sometimes wants to die out ( which it has). i got it checked out and they said that the air flow sensor was giving random errors. Try that, it worked for me.

 

[PeteyBoy3K]

Apparently the CEL was thrown by some EGR valve that was giving wonky signals. They replaced it.

That was a fun convo with the service tech.

tech: "it was some sensor in the evaporative system"
me: "so it was a peice of plastic that needed to be replaced?"
"....well, it was an actuated sensor"
" so a peice of plastic with a servo?"
"exactly!"

Otherwise, it's still idling a bit rough... but I guess that could be attributed to age, cold, bad-gas, some unknown lurking problem (damn, how they lurk), etc.

 

[lsdeater]

i have no idea what the problem is, but you better make sure that they get all the bugs outta that car before your warrenty is up. I blew my motor less then 1000 miles outta warrenty and mazda offered NO assistance at all. MAKE them fix everything.

how and under what circumstances did you engine blow ?