I just got a call from my daughter and her 3s needs a new engine at 15,000 mi. She was driving down the interstate and noticed a large ploom of smoke coming out the back. Had it towed to a dealer and they told her the engine was dead today. Has anyone else had a problem like this?

Other than this it has been a great car.

 

Very strange at only 15,000 miles. No i haven't had this problem and I hope I don't either.

 

Well its hard to tell you if someones had a problem like this, when you havent stated the problem...What was their diagnosis on why it died? They wont just tell you "its dead" without an explanation. A friend of mine has 89,000 on his 3(he drives it over 50,000 miles a year due to his job) and hasnt had a single problem with it.

 

Well, keep us updated on what the final diagnosis is, as my mum has a 3, and I hope she doesnt have something like this happen, she NEEDS that car to get places.

 

I wonder if it was too much oil, thats the only thing I can think of that fits, but then again I'm no master mech.

 

Jeffro,
I beg to differ because 'DEAD' is exactly what she was told. No other data yet. My post was to highlight an engine lasting only 15000 miles and had there been any other failures in this range. So, if someone has had an engine failure in this range I'd like to know. I don't care why it failed, it failed.

My guess is it is lubrication related. But with the only diagnosis as 'DEAD' I'll have to wait. I'll post a followup later.

 

If the plume of smoke was white (steamy), then the head gasket probably blew coolant into a cylinder. If she pulled over immediately, it probably did not ruin the rings and then possibly the piston. Hydrolock could explain it being dead (engine won't turn) when the dealer tried to crank it.

If the plume of smoke was blue, it was possibly a ring failure and oil was suddenly allowed into the combustion chamber. The broken rings could sieze and cause them to deem it as dead.

If the plume of smoke was black, it could be a fuel injection failure, pouring too much gas into one or more cylinders. That could be electronic or mechanical, but the engine may spin freely and not start.

Let us know what they find.

 

Latest form the dead 3S is that they only told her the engine was 'dead', love that explanation, and that Mazda was sending a new engine. They have given her a loaner car and said the engine should be in the car by next Thursday.

If I ever get the whole story I'll post it.

Alan

 

Ha ha...awesome. Ity definitely sounds like a lubrication problem for sure. At 15k miles, when was the last time the car was serviced? I mean if the oil wasn't changed and of course depending on her driving habits...bad things can (possibly) happen.
This is speculation of course...I blew my engine in my 97 Eclipse because the oil guage went out on me...and the next thing you know...there's chunks of the block and blue smoke laying on the highway....wasn't very pretty or pleasant to say the least.

 

Wow! That's some scary &@#$! Usually a mechanical shop will be the first to tell you (and blame you) when a motor blows. Did you have a recent oil change? Was the drain plug left off? Not giving you a reason smacks of cover-up to me. After all....how can you prevent a reoccurrence unless you know the cause?!

 

Oh...and MAKE SURE SHE BREAKS THAT NEW ENGINE IN...she can't go back to driving the way she did prior....it needs to be babied!!

 

I have a 3s 5door, and the same thing happened to my engine at 15,800 miles. A huge cloud of white smoke came pouring out of my tailpipe after sitting at a light for 2 minutes or so. No noises, shuddering, sputtering....nada. Good thing I looked in my rear view to notice all the cars swerving behind me....yeah lets just say the cloud was HUGE. I stopped the car ASAP called AAA for a tow.

The Mazda dealer said it was "internal engine failure" and they couldn't really tell me much more because, as they put it, "The Mazda factory doesn't let them get into the engine if such a problem exists." They have to ship it back to the factory for a full "autopsy" of sorts and we never hear another thing about it.

I have had the new engine in for 1300 miles now and it's great...I am in the break in period so you know how that goes.

OH and I just took the 3s back to the shop last week because of a bleeding fuel pump.....yeah it needed to be replaced....so watch for that too. The pressure was bleeding off. Symptoms: engine wont turn over first time you try to start it...just cranks. Then finally stars up on the second try.

 

I will bet that the engine failed due lack of oil.

Just speculation, but I could see something like the IX oil pump failing (from something like a cracked gear), causing oil pressure (and availability) to decrease right where it is needed - in the valvetrain and on the cylinder walls. After friction and resultant heat build up, piston rings would fail, as would valve stem seals. Whatever the issue, new cars use very little oil, so I doubt that a low oil condition would occur for any other reason than a quality problem that Mazda is responsible for at 15K. IMO, the root cause is probably a poor quality internal component. For example, imagine that the gear in the IX oil pump has a surface defect that would weaken it, or a chip that somehow stayed on the wrong side of the pickup screen when the engine was assembled. Mazda doesn't want to tell you more, because it is their fault.

 

Well frankly, this post scares me a little bit.

When I went to look at my car, the dealership JUST received a shipment in of new 3's. I test drove the one I ended up purchasing with the factory sticker covers, and the car hadn't even gone through tech setup yet (meaning the stereo didn't work, basically.. the car ran and drove, that's it.

After they ran the setup on the car, it rode a little nicer, and they had it aligned, so everything was kosher. On the day of delivery, they almost rescheduled because the car had some issues starting up in the morning. They said it took three turns with the starter to get it to run, and when it finally kicked in, it sputtered for 5 minutes.

They drove it about 10 miles, and put a full tank of gas, changed the oil, and let it sit for 3 hours outside (mid january, so it was about 5 degrees outside) and started it again and there were no problems.

I haven't had any more issues starting it up, but that does cause some concern.

I switched the engine over to fully synthetic at 2780 miles, and it didn't have any problems adjusting to the new oil at all.

I think every one of us would like to hear the outcome of this, and if this is a bigger issue than Mazda is leading on.

 

This is fairly common with new cars that arrive off of the trucks at the dealer lots. Imagine what happens after the vehicle is assembled at the plant. It is started and moved several hundred feet to a loading yard (most automakers call this "marshalling"). The car is then started and driven another couple hundred feet where it is loaded on to a train car. Then, it is taken on the train down to the port. At the port, the car is started again, and driven at low speed on to a boat. Then, off the boat and on to another train car or car carrier to the dealer. So, you can see that the car is started and moved at low speeds again and again before it is ever sold. Factor in the slow boat from Japan, and you can see that it might even have summer fuel in it, when it finally arrives at the dealer in the fall. The engine never gets warm through this sequence, which means fuel fouling is likely to occur. Throw in some cold weather, which makes things even worse. Ask anyone who has been a tech at a dealership, and they will have seen at least a couple of cars that came right off the car carrier with a misfire code already set, in some cases, stuttering. The dealer is likely to install a new set of plugs and clean up the engine by running for a while (in some cases adding a cleaning additive to help burn out any carbon that is present). IMO, this is not a big deal, and not related to the thread above.