The wife and I bought this 2006 Mazda 3 with the 2.3 litter engine a year ago on Labor day. Accept for some initial warranty work, it's been a good car, until now.
The problem started about a week ago when she tried to start the car to go to work. It barely turned over and eventually required a jump start to get going. It was one of the coldest nights yet so I kind of figured the battery was getting ready to give out. Once the car was started it seemed to run and start fine. I put the charger on the battery to top it off but that only lasted a day.
After I started it that first time with the jump start, it ran really rough for a good 5 seconds. I was concerned but was not able to correlate the poor battery performance with the rough idle so just left it as a hanging question. I replaced the battery with a new one that supplied 700 cold cranking amps which should have fixed the problem. It still started rough though. Hmm?
Last night my wife told me that on her drive home from work, she was on this one stretch of down hill leading to a stop sign and the car died. It's never done this before so now I'm concerned.
I would be suspect that the block had frozen but I checked the antifreeze in the fall and it's good to well below zero. I haven't checked the oil recently but I changed it in the fall with Mobil 1. This car has only had M1 in it since I've owned it.
Now if the battery is still good, then the motor is just turning over hard for some reason. A drag on the RPM would also explain the stall when coasting. I'm going to take it to Auto Zone and see if there are any codes but there is no CEL coming on and not other symptoms I can see. I have to admit that I'm worried this could be something serious.
Any suggestions?
The problem started about a week ago when she tried to start the car to go to work. It barely turned over and eventually required a jump start to get going. It was one of the coldest nights yet so I kind of figured the battery was getting ready to give out. Once the car was started it seemed to run and start fine. I put the charger on the battery to top it off but that only lasted a day.
After I started it that first time with the jump start, it ran really rough for a good 5 seconds. I was concerned but was not able to correlate the poor battery performance with the rough idle so just left it as a hanging question. I replaced the battery with a new one that supplied 700 cold cranking amps which should have fixed the problem. It still started rough though. Hmm?
Last night my wife told me that on her drive home from work, she was on this one stretch of down hill leading to a stop sign and the car died. It's never done this before so now I'm concerned.
I would be suspect that the block had frozen but I checked the antifreeze in the fall and it's good to well below zero. I haven't checked the oil recently but I changed it in the fall with Mobil 1. This car has only had M1 in it since I've owned it.
Now if the battery is still good, then the motor is just turning over hard for some reason. A drag on the RPM would also explain the stall when coasting. I'm going to take it to Auto Zone and see if there are any codes but there is no CEL coming on and not other symptoms I can see. I have to admit that I'm worried this could be something serious.
Any suggestions?
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