what is a early sign of knowing you have a rod going out or some kind of engine problem? I recently noticed my car is idling a bit rougher even after warmed up and driven for a little while. once i come to a complete stop and just sitting there the car feels more rough than i remembered. Car runs and drive fine other than the new found rough idling. I got an 09 with just about 12k miles and mods are just an intake and bov

it is called colder weather...

u had ur speed last winter of just got it?

change ur oil?

don't worry about it cuz ur gonna sell your car soon anyways:footinmouth:

I got my speed new about half a year ago. Oil changes every 3000 miles. But the idling started before the cold weather hit. And with this unpredictable Texas weather, it even idles rough at upper 70s now. Would going back to complete stock for winter help?

so this thread has gone from discussing the factory thrust bearing on the end of the crankshaft allowing the crankshaft to move ever so slightly and potentially lead to bent rods and failure of everything else - which could be diagnosed by funny feelings at the clutch pedal
to
swine flu, backwards walking betty, hell
just wanted to recap!

I have seen clutch pulsations, low compression, severe smoking/oil burning.

when you say clutch pulsation, does that mean it's loud clanking noise when at idle? my sister got a G35 and it makes that same clanking sound after a short drive

just about every manual transmission car out there makes a little different sound when the pressure plate is not depressed and the clutch plate is in contact with the transmission -
that's not what he's talking about

I am talking about vibrations or pulses that you feel in your foot that change frequency as you rev up/down with the clutch pushed in.

So, lex, are you saying stock rods are good if you pulled them and had them machined? Or the imperfections are just covered up or created by a machining post production?

Guess at that point you'd just replace em anyways.


Any one find any more info on that diamond cut washer that may be a savior to the later models?

While machining them might help, it might also bring about other failures at the wrist pin area. If you've got them out, replace them with aftermarket.

The small end imperfections would seem to place a lateral bending load on the rods on axis with the wrist pins. This would significantly stress both the rod and the wrist pin, as well as causing the wear patterns seen on one side of the rod bearings. I know we've seen broken wrist pins, so that supports this theory. I suspect most or all of the broken, and especially bent rods, would support the theory by having bent or broken in the same direction, specifically being bent toward cylinder 1.

As far as crankwalk, if it exists, it's not directly related to the rod issue, but it would exacerbate the problem, for sure.

well nrs my 2009 has serious power and is holding up just fine

How many miles do you have on your setup 18....? Like 100? hahaha. Wouldn't be a bad idea to start planning for a build sometime down the road. I think your motor will hold up fine for quite a while, but why not start saving and build when you get the chance. Then beat on it happily for years to come, haha.

i have been fully bolted for 10,000 miles and now this and is still running like the day i bought it

Good to hear, and Good luck on another 10,000.

If you pull the pan would there be any possible way to see the gap on the crankshaft/rod?

Using other failures as a guide, don't hold your breath for another 50k miles....

And brian, don't be scurred to launch your car, lol. Let's see a 1/4 mi time!

what's with all the sour grapes guys?

whether you drive the car hard or not, none of the findings suggest that the rod bending is the direct result of high-boost and high-power abuse. from the axial load findings, who says it can't be from ONE single drop clutch launch, but spends 90% of time cruising in the PT-knock range? [pure speculation]

there's a local 2007 MS3 on sale w/ close to 100K km or just over 60K miles on it...modded and tuned with SB @ 16psi for 310whp on a Dynapak dyno...that's more like 330whp on a Dynojet...car is completely beat on at the strip, road courses, highway and the streets...still runs like a champ...\

he did have a CP-e FP from very early on tho...

cp-e hpfp ftw! :p

drive it hard it likes it ;)

my cp-e pump should ship today, hopefully!

Everyone is worrying to much about blowing. It’s a small number of speeds that have blown and not everyone that owns a speed joins a forum to talk about there car. A lot of people only post when they have problem and then everyone gets all crazy thinking they are going to go next. I have a 2007 MS3 I/TBE/BOV stock ECU. added these mods at 20,000 Miles; I now have 81,000 miles on my car and have not had any problems.

I think it’s only a small number of speeds with defective rods and we are seeing these engines going early. If there was a flaw with every rod Mazda put into the speeds engine, everyone would be blowing. EVERYONE!

True, but if its a tolerance issue would it not be nice to know of a way to possibly inspect to find if you could be a candidate for rod chucking?

If you pull the oil pan would you be able to see the crankshaft and measure to see if this is a problem? Sorry if this is a retarded question but Im pretty noob yo!

I am not sure if there is a way to check you crankshaft for play or not, I would ask Lex that question. My whole thinking is why sit here and worry about if there is play or not. Lets say you have play, are you going to go out and build a new motor because of it? Your sig says you are stock so if you blow take it into the dealer and have them replace it under warranty, if you are stock it should not be a problem (hopefully).

I am stock. Doesnt mean I wouldnt like to find out possible issues before they become issues. Yea, sure if it blows while under warranty I just get the dealer to replace it, but say a couple years from now Ive got a few bolt ons and my warranty is about to expire. Should I have to dough to go forged?

Why are people so negative to find information? Is what Lex doing saying we are all doomed? [size="5]NO![/size] But, for some people this could have been the reason and for others could still be a possible problem.

Think of Lex as a pre-TSB. Dont think every post he makes is "we are all fucked because of xxx" but rather "Hey, check this out, has anyone see this pattern? Maybe this is something to be aware of."

Knowledge is a good thing.

Crankshaft end play can be checked......

Never said what Lex is doing is bad, I think its great he is looking into all of this. The thing is if the previous models have endplay there is nothing you can do about it unless you tear the motor down and fix the problem. I think this problem is isolated and only pertains to a handful of speeds.

Knowledge is a good thing; just don’t let it freak you out into thinking you’re going to blow every time someone comes us with a new idea.

Guys,

I was browsing 247 today and an 09 cwp blew his motor recently. He has no compression in cylinder 3. Mods are sri, tip, bpv, ap w/ots map, test pipe and cbe.

He wants to tear his motor down since he has been black flagged by mazda. I along with a few other speeds will be helping him tear his motor down in the next few weekends.

This guy lives in queens ny so if anyone local wants to help pm me and ill keep you in the loop as to when and where. Lex I will take plenty of pics and send you the remaining rods.

I appreciate this. Get a hold of me when you tear it down and let me know of the findings. So no compression but not a tossed rod? Rod knock?

I think I can sum up these engine failures in a few words. First of all, there are MANY factors that can lead to failure. I have repeated what these are many times. Any one or combination of these can cause a failure. Sometimes an engine is bad from the factory, sometimes it is owner induced.

I think that if you take anything away from all this is how to take care of your car to REDUCE the risk of damaging it and at the same time being aware that anything can break.

If you take away the people that failed due to running lean, user induced detonation, low RPM loading, excessive boost, poor/inadequate tuning I think you will find that quite a few cars fail just because.

his car - thought it was a cam issue

quote from him:

i have most tools let me know what you need my boy goes to Lincoln tech and we could get tools from there. i dont have the ms3 shop manual but i could get it and no hole in the block. the car turns on it just sounds like it has cams. there is a misfire in cylinder 3 so i took it to lincoln tech and they put a camera in cylinder 3 and saw that there were metal shaving in it.

i got the compression test and there is no compression in cylinder 3 and there is a vacuum leak. no smoke from anywhere mayb just lil from the exhaust but thats cuz of the weather

mod list- cobb sri
cobb turbo inlet
cobb sts
greddy exhaust
cat delete
greddy bov recirculated
cobb accessport
rear motor mount
and thats about it

dont remember how it looked but half of the rod was gone like the circle looked like a C

obviously i told him to never start the car again

I am guessing he did not have a fuel pump upgrade with those mods.

Im not crazy about the cobb OTS maps....I know it wasn't the latest version but I used to get WOT kr with the 1.03 OTS. After tuning it myself with ATR (based on the 1.03) no more WOT kr.

im not a fan either but with his mod list he wouldnt qualify for any ots map. he was running stage 2 +sri

I would certainly not run stage 2 on the stock pump.

*reads lex's post and shakes head about running 3071r on stock pump*




*sighs and goes back to work*

LOL, but i think my 5500ft elevation helped me quite a bit.

Yes it certainly did. Your turbo also spooled later - more RPM = more fuel in a cam driven pump.

Haha, i was always waiting for the stocker to fail, and kept a close eye on rail pressure after each mod. Finally it was the cooler weather that pushed me over the edge, and kinda took me by surprise, but the leanest my afr's ever got was mid 12's and only on 2 or 3 wot pulls tops.

I think my stocker was on the way out....I used to hit mid 1700's PSI. Over the past few months, it rarely hit 1700's, but maintained high 1600's. Had the CP-e unit put in and immediately hit max of about 2030psi.

during the later weeks before the swap to the CP-e pump, I saw KR up to 8.0 sometimes...after the swap, I still get the part-throttle 5.9 KR countdown, but no more KR of 7 or 8...

Remember the pump addresses in-boost high load fueling, not low load fueling. The KR while cruising on the highway will likely not be affected by the pump at all.

yes agreed...I wasn't looking for the FP to solve my PT-knock...but I do want to point out that it does address the dangerous kind of knock some of us experience @ stg 2+.

I bet our cylinders have pretty bad out of round issues with the thrust problems. I wanna mic my motor now and see where its at after reading this thread.. good finds lex.compression test/wet test/leakdown test here I come!