Looking for some advice as I just recently made the switch over to Mazda, so I'm not very knowledgeable about these. My fiance's 2005 Mazda 3 2.3L just recently had an odd occurrence of not starting. We tried to start it and it would try to turn over, but not actually start. You could hear it trying, so it was not your typical dead battery "click". Naturally, we assumed battery was just low enough to not start, so we jumped it. It started after about two seconds while giving it some gas. However, a decently sized white plume of smoke came out of the exhaust. We had the battery checked and it tested out fine. Now it has been running fine and we've had no problems starting it since then. My first thought was starter or alternator. Any thoughts? Is this a typical problem for older Mazdas? It has 120,000 miles btw.

 

When the car is started for a short time (minute or two) but not heated up, it will flood the next time you try starting if it's left for a while. I ran into this on mine and had to pull the fuel pump momentarily to get it unflooded.
When I have it modes a short distance / time i've revved it a little before turning it off to let the engine spin more with no fuel in the system to "clear it out" and haven't had issues of flooding since.