Wife and I took a vacation about a month after I returned from a 7 month overseas deployment up to an Air BnB and it was located on a significant hillside so the grade was steep, as were driving up the car starts to make a clacking sound like it turned into a diesel. Get to the Air BnB and I check the oil and it's on the bottom of the dipstick, let rhe car settle for about 30 minutes and check it again and still at the same level. Couldn't drive the car and had to get our Air BnB hostess to buy us oil in a remote town located high in the hills, luckily there was some to be found and we finished our vacation.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and the car is still burning oil and we take it in to Mazda, they find the idler pulley is leaking and still do a dipstick mark test and have us drive for about 2500 miles, we bring the car back and it's burning between 1/2 to 3/4 of a quart of oil. Leave the car with the dealer and they recommend a total teardown of the engine for diagnosis, I have the car under extended warranty so I said to go for teardown. Get a call from Mazda the next day saying that they backtracked on the teardown and decided to get a diagnostic flowchart from Mazda which stated to basically "wait and see if the problem reoccurs" and said they also got official input from the Mazda gods that excessive oil consumption is normal in a high mileage car. 80,000 miles to me, who is also a mechanic, doesn't constitute high mileage with their competition pumping out cars and trucks that can go for 300,000 miles without major repair. After some pushback they wouldn't budge and we took the car back.
Checked the value of the car the following week and sold the car within 1 day for just under retail price to a dealership thanks to the lovely chip shortage.
Bottom line: I didn't trust the engine anymore and I believe mazda didn't want to honor the warranty which was going to be void in a year or another 30,000 miles anyways so I cut my losses before they mounted. Skyactive engines have high compression ratios and I'm sure that doesn't help with wear on a gasoline engine, I can only imagine how long the new turbocharged models are going to hold out.
Wife and I took a vacation about a month after I returned from a 7 month overseas deployment up to an Air BnB and it was located on a significant hillside so the grade was steep, as were driving up the car starts to make a clacking sound like it turned into a diesel. Get to the Air BnB and I check the oil and it's on the bottom of the dipstick, let rhe car settle for about 30 minutes and check it again and still at the same level. Couldn't drive the car and had to get our Air BnB hostess to buy us oil in a remote town located high in the hills, luckily there was some to be found and we finished our vacation.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and the car is still burning oil and we take it in to Mazda, they find the idler pulley is leaking and still do a dipstick mark test and have us drive for about 2500 miles, we bring the car back and it's burning between 1/2 to 3/4 of a quart of oil. Leave the car with the dealer and they recommend a total teardown of the engine for diagnosis, I have the car under extended warranty so I said to go for teardown. Get a call from Mazda the next day saying that they backtracked on the teardown and decided to get a diagnostic flowchart from Mazda which stated to basically "wait and see if the problem reoccurs" and said they also got official input from the Mazda gods that excessive oil consumption is normal in a high mileage car. 80,000 miles to me, who is also a mechanic, doesn't constitute high mileage with their competition pumping out cars and trucks that can go for 300,000 miles without major repair. After some pushback they wouldn't budge and we took the car back.
Checked the value of the car the following week and sold the car within 1 day for just under retail price to a dealership thanks to the lovely chip shortage.
Bottom line: I didn't trust the engine anymore and I believe mazda didn't want to honor the warranty which was going to be void in a year or another 30,000 miles anyways so I cut my losses before they mounted. Skyactive engines have high compression ratios and I'm sure that doesn't help with wear on a gasoline engine, I can only imagine how long the new turbocharged models are going to hold out.
- Dillon C., Port Hueneme, CA, US