tell me about it
we just bought a 2008 Saab 9-7X aero with a 390hp/395tq LS2 under the hood
0 to 60 in 5.5 / AWD
I'll race any MS3 on here from a dig with my son in the back watching Spongebob on the DVD player lol

i feel ya..that is one of the most european looking gm cars i have laid my eyes on. look more like the holden version from australia. plus you get that normally aspirated power, but that things weights more than a german tank. you may want to wait until the economic smoke clears...looks like gm's on the bubble financially. when there are no dealerships around and the service employees were cut, where are you going to take the car that will honor its 100k factory warranty. not looking good for those guys at all.

thats interesting. how are the balance shafts driven in the qr? I know the big Honda 4s that have balance shafts NEVER have problems, but they are belt driven off the crank snout.

sorry bout your car idrvslo. not much else to say

chain connected to the crank then to an assembly of some sort located in the oil pan that has a tiny chain sprocket on its end. get a good view here...http://www.jimwolftechnology.com/wol...structions.PDF

IDRVSLO....
sorry to hear about your car...
my favorite ms3= IDRVSLO
my favorite ms6= whoosh..
to not have you guys to look up to anymore would be an upsetting thing for me.
i really wish you the best of luck with what ever you decide to do.
i remember a few months ago you were thinking of selling your car. i guess that would have been the right move, as sad as it is to say.
it sucks that i have to be afraid to drive my car...
and put all my mods back on just to know that this thing could blow...
anyways...
good luck...


(btw Mrlilguy called it from a mile away)

I am always honest with my circumstances, theres no reason for me to lie. I dont want there to be any clouds about what I was doing when this occured. I could have been idling in a parking lot and I feel that it would have let go. I wasnt in boost and I was babying the pedal. I was scared shitless just to drive the car but really didnt have much choice. Its my only car and I live miles away from work. I couldnt fork over thousands to tear it down not knowing 100% that it was the issue. In the long run it would have been the right choice, but you live and learn. I am currently looking at a second car to drive around for 11 months until I deploy. The aftermarket equipment will be parted out in order to fund this along with my wedding in July. Still up in the air on the wheels and exhaust being sold.

Some might think this is the wrong choice but bare with me. I will be in and out of the field over the next 11 months and away from home for 3 of them. So that leaves me with 8 months to even drive the car. The first two will be to build the damn thing. So six months of driving part of it in the winter and for what......to park it for a year while I am deployed. I am going to build it and I am going to go with a BT. However to do it right, which is not totally known I need time and money. I figure in 18 months we will know WAY more about these cars. Does that make sense? FS post goes up tonight.....

yeah honestly that rod was at a point where it was ready to go doubt there was anything you could do about it. Hell you even took the time to drop the oil pan and inspect the roads and still couldn't find anything. At that point theres nothing more you can do.

i think youre downfall was not having any brand loyalty.... Mrlilguy didnt have any brand loyalty either.... nor did I, when the car blew. I think thats what we call proof right there.. cold hard proof:)

Originally Posted by melan47 View Post

could we have a balance shaft problem? i have little technical experience, so bare with me. i track a nissan sentra and during my project i was consulted to get rid of the balance shafts as number one priority by a veteran qr tech...the engine is the qr25de. jim wolf made a kid for the removal process which added in oil baffles for 95 bucks. the balance shafts were a ticking time bomb in this car if driven near redline for extended use. could the ms3 have faulty balance shaft assembly and the community is exposing it because we are pushing our cars into the high rpm range and causing rapid failures. just thinking out loud...slap me if out of line.



interesting point. the BS assy. does put a load on the engine is are right under cyl.3 which is where most rods have been destroyed on this engine. the BS assy. is driven by a gear on the crank between cyl.2 and cyl.3. it may be possible that the added stress is in that area is multiplied as power and boost increase.....we may be onto something here. i may be getting that bsd kit sooner than later

did IDRVSLO have a balance shaft delete???
and did Mrlilguy???

already interested in this idea (BS Delete) but the theory is.. well... just another theory at this point.

im interested also ....fuck now i think that I will play it safe and invest in rods....

ANY theory is better then no theory.....

I guess my brand loyalty saved my ass then haha. Had a Miata, then got a MZ3, then the MS3. Next up... new gen RX7? Hmmmmmm

So where do I buy the BSD? Who has them in stock?

2.3l duratec.

f2 motorsports

First off, very sorry scott and thank you for your service to our country. Get us some of those terrorists in the mountains of pakistan, will ya! I myself am going to donate to a good guy and serviceman. Check your paypal bro..

I couldn't agree more. Darksun, you hit right on the money. I get shitloads of KR at at that RPM range. Speedy3 posted that his timing chain was loose last time he checked and he too is getting KR like there's no tomorrow..

It all seems though to come to the ticking. If the ticking was due to a bent valve, would it be the cam against the tappets or the piston against the valve? What I need is the frequency of the ticking against the rpms of the car.

I have 40k miles and no vibes yet, but don't really care since i'm covered to 100k miles.

As soon as I get a few grand for a decent down payment, I'm dumping this car like a psycho girlfriend.

not me....treat it right and this car will run just fine. If you want BIG BIG power thats a different story but with simple bolt-ons there has been no problems, for me anyway. Too much panacia being thrown at us low power guy's and it really puts a negative vibe on a good car if the power and boost is kept at a reasonable level. Trading it in after a year is like throwing 5 grand in the garbage, besides your monthly payments for a year.
As mentioned i feel real bad for the big power guy's dealing with this car and figuring it out with there hard earned cash, but for the rest of us there has not been too many issues to keep it safe.

Except that plenty of blown engines have come from people not making big power.

http://www.mazdaspeedforums.org/foru...-hotcakes.html

Feel free to take your chances, but I'll gladly take 5k of depreciation + a new car over a 5k+ blown engine.

(shrugs)

everyone who i know personally that has an ms3 is doing just fine. myself included.

the interwebz is not the end all and be all of real life...

just sayin'

Clearly there is no way to get a representative sample of MS3 owners + mods & all that crap, but I don't see anything like this many blown engines on NASIOC, evolutionm or any other brand's tuner forums. I also know that my car gets 6.0 KR on the stock map & 4.9 KR tuned in spite of my best efforts to change plugs, check gapping (twice), tighten every clamp I can reach with a wrench to the point of stripping one of them, and even thowing octane booster in with the gas. That is flat unacceptable for very run of the mill bolt ons.

If your car is golden, then good for you. Knowing that your friends with mud flaps & fart cans as their major speed mods are still running strong sure makes me feel better about the prospect of putting a hole in my block on my next grocery run.

Obviously, there is very little consistence in people's experiences, which just leads me to conclude that there is some very shitty quality control at Mazda, posters have been out-right lying, or both. In any case, I'm not waiting around until I bust a rod only to find out that a 5k+ rebuild won't even solve the problem.

I just feel sorry for whatever next sucker owns this car. No wonder Ford is only weeks away from chapter 11.

because people have more experience with those engines, ej25,4g63, etc, our engine is new and of course there will be many people to blow and fail, but thats the same for anything people dont have experience with

4B11 is new as of 2007.

Here's a 10 second Evo X on stock internals: BVP Evo X 10.7 @ 124 - evolutionm.net

ok that has awd, its all in awd, we have a car that has the potential to trap just as high as the x, lchris's car trapped 123 on 17psi on his simulation 1/4, now hes upped the boost and can without a doubt out trap that evo

The point is that the one year old 4B11 can make that kind of power on stock internals without shitting a rod.

so can ours lol

you are a real comedic genious. how long did it take you to come up with that one? bravo...


good. so leave already; take your POS ms3 and your even worse attitude with you. bye!...no seriously...get out.

and good riddance!

What does Ford have to do with Mazda????????????????????????????????????????

Obviously you're having a bigger issue if your clamps are not loose, so don't act like everyone has your same unfixable problem.

ford owns mazda

No they don't. And they had nothing to do with developing the MZR DISI engine. Nothing.

Ford owns 33% of Mazda.

In Japan, 33% = Controlling Interest

Controlling Interest = ford privately flies an old white guy to japan to sit in on quarterly investor meetings.

Mazda's engineering group probably does not have an old white guy from Ford contributing in on the engine designs.

Too bad we don't have any feedback from an overseas community. You know the cars overseas are getting full jdm and if they are having the same issues well a ford partnership is obviously not to blame for blown engines. Does any one know of any CX-7's taking a crap on itself? Same engine, so we should be getting reports from that group too.

I've never heard of a CX-7 blowing up, Just a few smoking turbos, even then there has been maybe a handful of smoking turbos.

We could easily blow a CX7 up at the rate most of us are going :) I think transmission failure would happen first. Maybe its time i build a valve body for them.

Sure, with the skills of a professional tuner, enough meth to drown a fish, AND be lucky enough to own an MS3 that was actually made by workers who werent drunk. I may have missed it, but you will notice that the evo I linked didnt even have to run meth. Show me an MS3 trapping 12x with no meth.

STFU, I'll post here as long as I feel like it & the admin allows. I call it as I see it, and the MS3 is a POS unless you are lucky enough to have one that wasnt built after sake hour. I have a busted tranny mount & 6.0 KR to prove it. Several others are even worse off with blown engines. Playing Pollyanna that everything is great because you & your friend's car is still running doesnt change the facts, champ.

you kids are so cute playing on here..

teeeeheeeee

I didnt, but you knew that. My point is that way too many people are having the same problems I am or worse. My point is that the MS3 is probably the worst choice for even a modest tuner car right now because of the many failures that have been documented by myself, others on this board, and on other boards.

Listen, I used to be just like you & your buddy "builthatch" (I guess an intake & race pipe is "built"). Anywho, I thought the MS3 was the best FWD turbo produced. I loved the car & enjoyed modding it. Then I started running into my own problems while reading countless others having KR & blown engines. When the facts changed, my opinion changed. What do you do?

Right now, I am praying that my tune holds KR low enough that it can last until I can dump it. Keep driving yours & having fun. I honestly hope you dont suffer the same fate as many others have. If you dont, count yourself lucky. If you do, dont expect sympathy.

Aren't most cx7's unmodded automatics with moms driving them ?? that could have somethign to do with them not blowing up .. they are not trying to run 12's in them ... :poke:

im making my mom get a cx7..
i plan on an intake and front mount.. at least...
that is, if she is willing to let me touch the thing..
haha

You're upset because you modded it and you can't fix your knock retard problem, and you got a broken transmission mount why? We're you stock when that happened? I doubt it. Buy something else and be done with it.