gonna tell him tough shit. powertrain warranty expires at 60k unless he got some sort of extended warranty. sorry for your troubles man, good luck

I have the Mazda extended warranty to 100k miles. It's the best warranty they offered. I recently had the tensioner pulley and serpentene belt replaced under the extended warranty. In the past under the manufacturers warranty, I have had two turbos replaced, the fuel pump TSB, the ABS unit, the shutter valve TSB and the motor mount TSB.

Never any other mods on the car. I wanted to stay with the Mazdaspeed parts only to maintain the warranty.

wow, you go a lemon. sorry dude

The funny thing is, KOMO 4 news showed up and interviewed me on cars breaking down during the holiday season. It aired on TV later that night. Also, my son was with me and I video taped the entire scene, to prove that I was on the off ramp, just in case they question what happened. The freeway comes down a steep hill to the off ramp and I was engine braking in gear to minimize brake wear and there was a car in front of me and a car behind me. The car shook and I heard a metalic ping sound from something dropping under the car and trailing behind me. I immediately pushed in the clutch and felt the clutch pedal vibrating heavily. As soon as I depressed the clutch, the engine died. There was a trail of oil all the way down the off ramp to where I stopped.

I took a look under the car today and it looks like it is the #1 cylinder. The one closest to the drivers side of the car. It cracked the block from the oil pan up to where the rod hit the side of the block.

smart move on the warranty...i as well purchased the extended 100,00 mile plan a couple months back...as a long term car that is a DD, there is no way in HELL i would keep this thing without a warranty...i understand most cat's here want speed....but honestly this car for a DD is plenty fast for NJ roads....and realistically i rarely get to use the HP/TQ i have except up to the speed limit....Tickets in this neck of the woods are keeping police forces locally in funds....tickets are fund raisers in a way....they got my son twice and me once this past year...we slowed down....not by choice though. And the warranty is not by choice either, but this cars track record needs a warranty for those that need it for piece of mind or financial reasons...for me it's both reasons.

Out of curiosity, how is the car driven? Is it driven hard? Did you have any symptoms prior to the blow-up?

Seems some of the early speeds have a design issue that surfaces after some time.

I commute to work about 80 miles a day and about 70 of that is freeway miles. I get on it probably 4 times a day WOT, passing people mostly, but for the rush too. I never race people just because I fear the racing/reckless driving ticket and what it may do to my security clearance at work.

I feel I have really taken care of the car. I change the oil every 3k miles with AMSOIL or Mobile 1. I watch my scan gauge II for KR every time I get on it and let off the instant I see a reading. I used to seafoam the engine every 10k miles, but missed the last 15k miles...Not sure if that was prolonging the engine or not. I pay att
ention to every change in noises and didn't notice anything different that night except one. About a mile before it blew, I noticed a KR reading of 3.8 degrees, so I let off the gas and upshifted to 6th gear to lower the rpms. A few moments later, the road turned to a hill and I downshifted to engine brake down the hill. About 3/4 mile later, it happenned under no load or throttle. Is this a candidate for the PCV issue? I'm going to ask the dealership to check for oil in the cylinders.

asic, when you go WOT to pass people on the freeway, do you downshift to 5th or 4th?

I check my RPMs first and try to get them to at least 3500 before going wot. I'll either shift down or punch it as long as i'm above 3500 RPMs. I also check the KR reading right when I punch it too. That is why I wait until i'm above that 3000-3500 range, because of the random KR that we are all getting.

Also, would a bad injector leak fuel into the engine? That or the oil injestion would make the most sense to my case with no throttle.

Update: Mazda road-side assistance is coming to get my car this morning and the dealership knows the car is coming in.

Just hope they don't try the old "spirited driving" excuse to void your warranty. I am one of the few guys who had their engine warrantied. While they were ripping it down, deciding whether or not to warranty it, I made sure they checked the clutch wear. They were quite surprised that it was in great shape at 64 000 km and that really made them realize I didn't bag the crap out of my car. This was one piece of evidence that helped to convince them I was nice to my car (although I hope a clutch with 64 000km on it would be in good shape).

Good luck man :)

I still have plenty of clutch left as far as it "feels" when I shift. It's the original clutch with 61,000 miles. I'm not sure how long the clutch should last under calm driving conditions?

Update: The car is at the dealership now.

good luck, keep us posted

Thanks for keeping us updated. A number of things could happen and yes this is a strange way for a car to go but we're not strangers to strange here.

Was the car smoking or burning lots of oil?

It genuinely sounds like you had a case of the rod bending/weakening over time which we've seen on many other cars or some strange hydrolock situation.

I would get as much info from the dealership as possible regarding what the cause was. Ask about the oil (although you will find oil in the cylinders simply because it blew), ask about the injectors etc etc.

I noticed just a little bit of oil smoke in the mornings when I started the car to warm it up, but that would go away pretty quick. It actually doesn't seem any different than a year ago. I'll call them often. They said they would let me come and look at the engine once they get it broken down.

bring your camera and take lots of pics

Hmm, smoke at cold startup are signs of a tired engine, valve seals leak, rings leak. How long has it been smoking in the morning for?

It's hard to tell if it is really smoke or not with the cold weather, but It didn't smell right, so I concluded it was smoke. It was very faint and lasted about a minute or two. I think it has been doing it for a while, like maybe a year or about the last 15k miles.

No updates yet.

Don't let the stealership try to jerk into "lack of proper maintenance" for oil changes. I wouldn't even mention that fact to the dealer. If the rings were worn, it wouldn't cause the rod to let go, it would just smoke a lot. A rod busting loose is some serious stress-related item, or wrist-pin torque-down issue, not related to cylinder wear.

They can't say anything about maintenance. I have had all the maintenance done at the dealership every 3000 miles and have all the receipts and the maintenance log filled out. I also wrote up a 7 page memo to the service manager explaining the sequence of events, step by step, leading up to the engine failure with pictures of the scene and oil trail down the offramp and diagrams of where it happened on the freeway.

So far, they have determined that the cause is undetermined.

They did tear down the engine today and I got a good look at the damage. Driver's side cylinder, they call it #4, was all messed up. Hole in one side of the block and a crack in the other side. The rod was snapped in 2, the piston was broken in half. All 4 valves were bent. They can't determine the cause and for the life of me, I can't figure it out either. The wrist pin and crank rod bearing both had clean free play. Remember, this happened with my foot OFF the gas, coasting in gear down a hill at about 3800 RPMS, so it couldn't have been detonation or pre-ignition. The tech and I checked the crankshaft endplay and it was HUGE. He said it looked like 8-10 thousands, but it looked more like 1/32 of an inch to me! I posted some picture, but will post more pictures when I get more time. They gave me a loaner car today. I can't figure out what caused this. My best friend and Saturn mechanic told me it sounded like hydrolock because the rod had a bend in the break. But that night, it wasn't wet out or raining. I don't know, maybe the oil ingestion issue that PTP found? It's impossible to tell since the piston was broken. That part of the head was covered with oil, but it could have come from the broken piston.

Sounds like possible crankwalk, also could be why mazda tightened up the tolerances on the 08.5/09 thrust washer

Good pictures - what is that bolt from?

What happened is that the rod likely snapped on a upstroke and this is why the piston impacted the head.

All Mazda motors blow this way - a rod that has a prior bend that fatigues and lets go.

I have my reservations about calling it hydrolock although it is certainly not out of the question.

If you get a clear picture of the rod bearings (both big end and small end) I can tell you if the rod was bent for a while or not. My inclination is that it was.

I have seen these motors out of tolerance as well. Crankwalk results in off axis loads on the rods that can fatigue, bend, and break them. Some of the earlier cars seem to have had this problem more frequently and unfortunately ended up blowing giving the MS3 a "weak motor" reputation.

From the spark plug it looks like you had quite a bit of blowby in that cylinder which again points to a misaligned assembly (bent rod).

If you are interested in more of what happened, I can tell you more from detailed pictures of bearings, the bottom of the piston, the cylinder wall. Most techs won't be able to troubleshoot a complex failure like this.

Basically goes with what im saying, the ones that should be of most concern is the 07-08 as the 08.5/09 have a lot less of chance.

Power is not the reason for blowing as crankwalk is a defect, and mazda knew something about it as they made changes in the 08.5/09 to tighten up the tolerances

It's the oil pan bolt from the 5th picture, just below the big crack in the block. When he took out the bolt, those 2 big pieces of block fell off the engine. That was tons of force to shear-shift that bolt like that.

Here's some more pictures. Look at the #1 and #4 intake valves....This probably would have been avoided with a catch can. I'f I kept this car, i'd install a catch can for sure now and seafoam it regularly. The last picture is my Merry Christmas Mazda picture. This happened the day after Christmas. I got this car in late 2006, so it was one of the first MS3's. I guess, It makes sense to never buy a first year model. Hopefully, i'm getting a 2010 block, but who knows. Is there a part number difference on the block crank, rods, etc??

These cars do run pretty dirty. It certainly looks like cyl 1 was running poorer comparing the spark plug to the others.

How come you had to change 2 turbos on the car?

I have read this more and more frequently.

1) Where does this information come from? Reference, Source?
2) What is the build date that the thrust washer was changed? This is most important as there is not an official 08.5 it is a term used on the forums if you were to talk to a service rep about a 08.5 he wouldnt know what you were talking about. What we need is build date that the part number changed...... anyone?

With Mazda, it's all about the VIN number, that's how they know exactly what part to put in a particular car.

It might be a shot in the dark, but you could try calling the parts dept. and asking them for price and stock on the thrust washer. If they did change the part, then 2 choices should appear on their screen, and they'll ask for your VIN to figure out which one fits your particular car. The build date is usually encoded in it, but the most important element is the VIS and VDS sections, which refer back to their database and describes virtually everything about your particular car.

One catch - if the new washer fits every engine block, they may show 2 parts with a note that one of them is no longer available - or not, they might have simply changed the database to show only one part, so you'll never know...

This happened to me with my last car. About 7 years after it was built, the secondary butterfly controller for the intake manifold failed for the 2nd time. The first time I was about to just replace some grommets, then Ford redesigned it as a non-serviceable assembly, probably because it was such a common problem. The dealer ran my VIN and said ya, this is the only thing available now.

Anyway, like I said, it's a shot in the dark. BTW, why do you want to know?

Build date and vin from xxxxxx is basically the same thing.
It is those two things that are referenced in TSB's and recalls to specify if something needs to be done or is already incorporated.

I have an 08.
Just curious which one mine has.
08.5 is a term used on the forums to describe some interior changes, Mazda does not use the term 08.5 and I have yet to see a hard evidence of when this different thrust washer was incorporated, so I am trying to narrow it down, rather than have people assume the 08.5 blanket statement is correct.

There is an 08.5, it is the mid year change that they did and updated the interior and other things over the 08, i dont know about the part number but i have heard from numerous people that they did make a change.
Now i do not know if the part number would show up differently if they stopped making the earlier one

It isn't, that's what I was trying to get across. Yeah, they translate that into build dates for TSB's and recalls, but this hasn't reached that level (yet). Even if one does apply to your build date, they still run the VIN to make sure.

Truth is, automakers can and do change various parts throughout a single model year. Example, the car behind yours on the line could have gotten a motor with the revised washer while your got the older one the same day.

Only the VIN number can be used to accurately query their database about a particular car. And I suspect that by now the revised thrust washer only pops up as a single part number for all 07-09 MS3 VIN's, since it's such a minor change.

Besides, even you had that information, whaddya gonna do, tear down your whole motor and replace it with the new one just in case? :)

He'll sleep better at night.

You really can't tell from that picture because that cylinder got flooded with oil when the rod and piston broke, but i have noticed that there was more buildup in that cylinder when I check the spark plugs last.

I thought everyone has been going through turbos? A friend of mine went through 3.

Tomorrow afternoon, I should be able to get pictures of the rod, piston and cylinder separately.

Crankwalk...Interesting. Since were all turbo car guys, I am sure many people are familiar with the severe crankwalk issues Mitsu had with the first gen 4G63. I know it was resolved mid 90's. Maybe someone (smarter than me) might want to check some of the posts on those forums and look for similarities?

Just a thought....

The 4g63 had a thrust bearing that was starved of oil at idle once the oil squirters got stuck open due to oil coking or debris. I haven't seen people report bad bearings here - perhaps poor tolerances from the get-go.

That was on the 2nd gen 7bolt blocks that had that problem and as lex said the oil squirters would commonly get stuck open

Is there any correlation to the years? What I mean is, I seem to see a lot more 2007's blowing than the other years, for some reason.

Too early to tell. The 07s have been on the road for longer and have had more wear, abuse, etc. Will have to wait a few years to tell.

Also people learned the DOs and DONTs over the years. A good number of blowups are due to user issues.

Is part throttle boosting still a bad thing? I remember for a while everyone was saying getting into low boost period is a bad idea. Go WOT or go home was thrown around a lot.

Loading the engine at low RPMs (lugging etc) is hard on the rotating assembly. High torque (spikes) at low RPM are always bad.

Ya, but it's so darn fun! :)