Posted on 02/24/2013 3:17:17 PM PST by Allen In Texas Hill Country
Hope no one minds if I shift gears from politics and bring up a car problem. Been buying used and new cars for near 48 years. Of the first 14 vehicles I never had a major failure such as what occurred Friday.
I live 60 miles northwest of San Antonio and was headed to SA. Got within 10 miles of destination when I smelled something and within a few seconds vehicles around me started beeping their horns. Billows of smoke was coming out and no power steering. The engine was still running and with emergency lights on I safely got off and parked where a tow vehicle could pick it up.
The dealer has had the car for nearly 2 days and still cannot detail what needs to be fixed. Or what still might be working. He hasn't yet mentioned the engine block or innards but near everything else under the hood is up for grabs.
The car is 4 1/2 years old with 35k miles. Due to unique circumstances I forgot to purchase extended coverage which I had on the car before this one. I screwed up and forgot. Do I have a question here???? I don't know, Anybody else have a car this relatively new fail so extensively? My 14 year old Tahoe has near 140k on it. Of course various this and that has been replaced but it still runs like a clock.
I wrote a letter that tries to explain my extreme frustration and maybe that is more of what I'm doing here, I'll mail it tomorrow. But its got only 35k and may be in the shop for 3, 4 or more days. What a PITA!!!! Now this is the 6th time I have bought this make so I thought, foolish me, that that I mean its not going to fail in 4 years.
Looks like you were wrong, a Mazda.
Looks like this is common with your car. Check out this discussion on Edmunds.com:
http://www.edmunds.com/mazda/cx-7/2008/consumer-discussions.html
Here’s one of several incidents like yours:
“Our 2008 Mazda CX-7 (Sport, AWD) had a compressor failure at just a hair over 30,000 miles. This occurred on our way back from vacation, through the hills of West Virginia. We started smelling burnt rubber. Shortly after that, I heard a loud bang - I lost power steering and all of my check engine lights came on. This was at 1AM. I was able to coast to an exit and find a hotel (had my wife, toddler, and infant). When I opened up the hood, the belts were shredded and coolant had sprayed everywhere.”
I’ve made a hobby of breaking and fixing my cars...so I know what a serpentine belt is. I still don’t think ann overheated engine would smoke enough to annoy other drivers....I think he blew a hose. And at first I thought he said there were dash lights on...but if you re-read it he’s talking about turning on his flashers. So no alternator light either.
This is your cue to get out of there REALLY fast. It sounds to me like this happened fast enough that once the A/C pulley is spinning, three bucks of engine cleaning in a car wash is all you need.
Sounds like you blew a power steering line (hose) and power steering fluid was squirting on the hot engine causing the smoke. have the car towed to your house and check it yourself.
Damn, getting old is a pain. Used to use Edmunds for everything and I forgot to check. Thanks.
This could be a big deal so it needs to be at the dealer its at. They have the best resources as far as I can tell. The Edmunds info is quite revealing. Thanks.
Agreed. Power steering line or possibly the power steering pump. Should be a fairly minor fix if there were no flames. And if the mechanic can’t find the problem, take it to someone competent.
Oh, and extended warranties are a rip-off.
If the belt and A/C bearing get replaced and you carefully look for overheating and other problems within the first minutes of starting the engine, and find none, there are likely to be no further problems. On the other hand, a mechanic could also spend many hours and many more dollars looking for more problems, too. He might even be able to "find" some.
We shall see said the blind man to his deaf daughter as he picked up his hammer and saw. :<((((
Thanks.
I have a ‘96 626 with 180k miles that I have been trying to run into the ground for 4 years for an excuse to get something newer. Haven’t put a dime into it other than what it needs to pass inspection and it runs perfectly. I don’t even change the oil. Just got a new vehicle 2 weeks ago so now the Mazda is to be used as a spare, but that thing has been unbelievably reliable and easy for DIY work as well.
My dad had an early eighties B2000 pickup that was the same, very basic, manual choke. Couldn’t kill it. The body rusted out from under it eventually, after about twenty years of hard use. Mechanically it was still servicable. Parted it out after the floorboards got scary, sold the remaining carcas for scrap.
Their early Wankel engines were a little more difficult, though,
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