Car was running fine, parked it after work, locked it up no problems. Go out the next morning, wouldn't crank, not only would it not crank, but it just clicked. Since the local dealership was shut down by federal marshals and the next closest dealership is over an hour away. I found myself in the position of hiring someone to come to my house and fix my car.

First, the battery...cheapest? $158.00 at Autozone. It started and now runs very rough and low rpms. So I was told by mechanic that my water pump is leaking and my belts are splitting, and that as long as he has it taken apart it would be my best bet to change the thermostat at the same time. Then belts, $39.00 at Autozone. Now waiting for thermostat and new water pump, don't know how much that will be because the parts won't be here until tomorrow. I am estimating $300.00 for parts. Now paying the mechanic? Getting him to come out and diagnose? $50.00. He tells me that fixing it this coming weekend? No less than $250.00 but not more than $450.00, and no I don't know that everything he says is wrong is in fact what's wrong. But I have no choice, since Mazda took out the temperature gauge. (love to know who thought THAT was a good idea.)

All I know is that this car seems to be falling apart, and although there is a Mazda dealership it is so far away that I would have to actually sell the car in order to pay to have it towed there.

engine light on and high revolutions when braking/cruising

I bought the car new in Jan 2011, and have loved driving the car, but suddenly the car developed all these problems in the last 2 months :(

I noticed that the engine light was on after I had the battery replaced on Jan 8. The day after that I noticed that the car would rev really high when was braking, to about 2,300-3,000rpm. It didn't accelerate though as I had the clutch in. I took it to the mechanic twice and both times their analysis of the car computer was inconclusive. The engine light would turn on and off, and would usually come on when it was hot day and stay on the day after before switching off again. The high revs would happen independent of the engine light but was most noticeable when first driving, and then the car would settle again...unless it was a hot day!

Finally, I took it to the mechanic for the third time and they diagnosed the car with a throttle body problem that would cost $1152 to fix. The mechanic recommended I wait until the problem was constant before fixing it because it doesn't really affect my driving much, but he warned me that one day I might find that the car would just stop working.