Omron - do you work for Mazda? I appreciate all the input but I have to decide for myself whether or not the noise is annoying... and it absolutely is. If you can get by pretenting it's a turbo charger, more power to you... me, no. In my case it has nothing to do with driving the car uneconomically... I hear it mostly at 50- 60 km/h. It is present at high speeds as well (and on bad days, at 0 - 20 km/h). I'm not paranoid either... just going crazy. Zoom Zoom my butt... Chirp Chirp / Whine Whine is more like it! Just had my '94 Civic on the road today... blissful silence, with 290,000 kms on it. Shoulda known better.

MyZmZm - where can I find this FAQ/TSB you refer to? I would like to point my dealership towards it. They've been nice, but they haven't been very helpful thus far.

Thanks,

J.

 

Sorry Jeff the issue, I am refering to is a known issue to mechanics that I associate with, that specifically addresses the Freq. Pitch at MyZmZm and has nothing to do with any sound at any other speed, what you are refering to maybe another issues or problem.

What i am refering to has been confirmed by other mazda drivers at the mazda meets I attend. On the models I specified. Also another thing you should be aware of are the burn rates of Mazda Protege's at speeds over 110kmph.

And I will repeat that is more related to a computer issues, the sound does not go off due to RPM in any gear, this problem only arrises in FINAL DRIVE GEAR (4) at 117kmp/h or higher. if you turn off OVERDRIVE at this speed the sound will leave, so I repeat it only occurs in Final drive.. ( we drove 5 cars the same way and found the same results)

Currently unless you upgrade your ECM to a MP3 varient (rare to find) that is the only way I know of that has stop that sound from occuring. that and dropping in a new tranny but I am not sure that would make it go away. From what we know the car comes this way.

 

Omron - just to let you know, I tried turning off the overdrive to see if that would have any effect on the whine. It had absolutely no effect whatsoever - the sound stayed exactly the same, just the engine was a little louder, that's all. I don't know if altitude or climate would have any effect (it shouldn't) on this issue, but everything I tried made no difference at all.

Jeff - I originally found the tsb on this site. There used to be a link to a site, created by TheMan, on many (maybe all?) TSB's issued by Mazda. While it's not on the site anymore, here is the link: http://web2.airmail.net/theman/protegefaq/

Go to the technical service bulletin section for 3rd gens, and it's #2993 - you'll recognize the description. Just be warned, Mazda does NOT consider this a problem. I was lucky in that the service manager at the dealership I got my car from really went to bat for me and encouraged the regional rep to get me a new tranny to try and remedy the problem. If you can get the same thing done, great, but just know it likely won't happen.