Quote:
Originally Posted by seifrob
May I hijack this thread a bit and ask for more experience with Mazda 5? Any reliability issues? shock absorbers, oil leakage? rust?. I need a car to haul my wife, three kids and a stroller and this seems adequate. cannot afford mistake though. what to watch when buying used M5?
|
Hello seifrob,
Ok, I'll fill your hijack request.
See my post
here.
It's been getting louder (road noise) as the mileage climbs higher, up over 150k+ miles now. Part of that is likely door seals not being perfect anymore. Part of that may be due to being rear-ended twice, badly enough to need some body repair work. Being a unibody, that probably tweaked door/door opening alignment somewhat. Also had an encounter between a parking garage roof support beam and the luggage-rack mounted box, so the roof got dented a bit.
Generally we've had no issues with the automatic transmission, contra Ecky's link. We were advised by our previous mechanic that changing the auto transmission fluid every 60k is pretty much mandatory if you want to get decent life out of it. At 150k+ it's doing fine after 2 changes. I think it might be starting to shift a bit "funny", but it is almost continuously in use as a family hauler. I do know that it is easy to "confuse" the transmission if you do a slowly increasing pressure on the throttle as the car speeds up. If I do it just wrong, it downshifts, then within a very short period of time hits the rev/throttle angle/whatever transmission program limit and upshifts again. Annoying, but avoidable.
No oil leaks. If you go to a cheapo oil change place, you may get oil stink as they spill it. I did A/B testing of two different mechanics and picked the one that never had oil stink after an oil change.
I'm occasionally getting a whiff of coolant smell when I get out of it after driving, but it doesn't appear to be using any and my mechanic hasn't commented on any issues. Runs fine.
Rust: covered in my post above. Generally at least the first gen ones rust pretty easily in the back wheelwell area. But we never wash it and live in the salt belt, so it could be considered paint abuse.
Struts (shock absorber equivalent) seem to last about ~50-75k miles or so. Had a rear one lock up and destroy the upper mount. Nasty banging noise, but inexpensive to fix. Earlier models had an issue with leaking factory struts - that's probably what got ours.
Bushings in the suspension are probably ~80-120k interval units. We've gone through the entire frontend (hubs, control arms, struts, balljoints) to clear a vibration issue that developed over time, after changing wheels and tires and multiple re-balancings. The rear end at this time is in need of overhaul (frozen adjusters, some torn bushings), but is still within alignment specs.
Also as mentioned in my post above the front undertray (at least on gen 1 models) gets trashed easily. The front airdam hangs low and scrapes a lot, too.
We've had a few no-restart incidents on a long drive in horrid icy snowstorm weather. Turned out to be something in the EVAP system and/or I suspect something akin to icing in the intake. Don't really know what caused it, but we had the EVAP system part fixed ($250?) and the problem never repeated itself. The issue showed up as a failure to restart after stopping for gas after a long drive in really crappy heavy snowstorm with heavy ice buildup on the vehicle. Always restarted after a 5-30 minute wait, though - I didn't "fix" it, it self-healed, so to speak. Annoying problem, but didn't strand us.
Tires: check the inside edge of the tread. This chassis (at least gen 1) eats tires it doesn't like. I've said this a few times, but it bears repeating. The chassis is set up with a lot of positive camber, per Mazda's "Zoom-Zoom" branding/marketing sporty image. It does corner well. If you search around, there were threads from Europe about wearing tires down to the cords on the inside edge, with the easily visible part otherwise appearing just fine. We had a *really* good run with some Continental ExtremeContact DWS tires, but the follow-up design DWS 06 did not do nearly as well. The current Michelin Premier A/S are crap.
Note that since the suspension is the same as a Mazda3/Ford Focus you can get all sorts of handling goodies. I was seriously considering adjustable rear control arms so that I could have the camber dialed back to a less sporty value for better tire life, but the tires will be warrantied (dealer says the tires are crap... so why'd they sell 'em to me?) and the alignment is within spec (or .01 out on one value, close enough that the tire dealer considers it not worth the effort to change and they'll sign off on it as being in spec) so not bothering until something gets clunky back there.
If you're really enthusiastic, MazdaSpeed3 parts fit, too.
Oh, front swaybar bushings rot out *fast*. Bad clunking noise over bumps. Doesn't affect performance/driveability in any way at all. Apparently you have to pull a lot of other parts out of the way to get to the mounts to replace the bushings, so it isn't a cheap job. Wait until you're doing the front control arms or whatever. Good thing to ding the seller on though "it clunks over bumps, that's a $$$ job, gimme discount kthnks".
Second gen theoretically has improved HVAC flow to the back half of the vehicle - more ducting - and the seatbelt geometry is improved in the third row as well. Hits better on the upper torso for smaller people. Also has a "swoopier" body panel design. That likely increases body stiffness, but looks more expensive to fix.
We find it fits our family well. Myself, my wife, our two kids, and my mother-in-law packed for a long weekend at a Renaissance Faire 450 miles away. Stroller, wagon, costumes, bags, etc. Removeable roof-rack and roof-top box a must for that (wagon and most of the bags/costumes go up top), and it doesn't drop the freeway mileage too bad either. The car is low enough that the roof-top box isn't a pain to install - I can do it myself. Loading is accomplished by standing in the open sliding door, feet on the door-jam. Not bad, really. For regular around-town work, with one rearmost seat folded down there's room for 5 people plus the stroller and diaper bag no problem. Might want to take your stroller to see the vehicle you are considering and test-fit - getting the wheels and handle to clear the rear hatch sometimes takes really specific positioning. IIRC (it has been at least 4 years since younger kid came out of the stroller) we might have been able to get the stroller behind the last row seats. Again - take yours and test-fit. The little "folding umbrella" type strollers fit real well - this was one of those convertible jobs that had the "click-in" baby carrier that fit the removeable "click-in" seat bases. Baby seats/boosters fit fine in all four rear positions. We generally put smallest in the passenger center, with next bigger kid right behind on the same side. Now they change up pretty regularly. Smaller kid is almost out of the booster. Needs another inch or so.
The sliding doors are *very nice* in parking lots - when the kids slam the door open to get out in an excited rush, they can't hit the other cars! Plus it makes access to the 3rd row a lot better for buckling a kid into their 5-point car-seat harness. I do wish sliding doors were an option on other small vehicles, they are soooo nice!
Best tiny minivan we could find. You may have other compact options where you are, though.
General things to check: maintenance history (transmission flushes every 60k miles or better!), rust, check engine light, tires, swaybar links, seatbelt retraction, and all the usual stuff you look at on a used car. We had to replace the rear swaybar links once, not too expensive as they are easy to get to. Rusted out. Oh, we had an issue with the MP3 disc changer - after being rear-ended, the discs got stuck. Something like $350+ to get the unit exchanged for a repaired one, not including labor or shipping. This is apparently a common issue on the in-dash changers, and it requires dis-assembly of the unit to remove discs/fix the problem. Since the MP3 changer was an upgrade for us, I swapped in the plain CD changer that the dealership left in a box in the van when we bought it, and added an aftermarket auxiliary input jack at the same time. These cars don't take aftermarket stereo equipment easily due to the integration of the HVAC controls and the radio controls. Aftermarket sytems that keep all functionality are rare and expensive. (or at least they were last time I looked into it a few years ago). Newer cars have more inputs, I think.
If you have the Mazda remote-start system (or any other dealer-installed remote-start system) make sure that the sensor that detects that the engine is running is installed. It took us 3 years to get the system to reliably start the car in suuuuper cold weather because it didn't know the car hadn't started! First year they said it was the battery. Second year they lengthened the cranking time. Third year I got mad, researched the heck out of it, and told 'em what they forgot. They fixed it, no more problems. Symptom of improperly installed system: when it is really super cold out (-20F or so air temp) and you hit the button, the car will give the "chirp" from the horn and the single headlight flash, crank for the pre-programmed time, fail to start, give the normal "chirp" and headlight flash of a successful start, sit there for 15 minutes with the car effectively in "run" position with everything on that you left on last, then shut off. I forget if it chirps/flashes when it shuts off. And it will be cold inside. When it is correctly set up, if it fails to start, it will give you a "double chirp" on the horn/double flash on the headlights and turn off. So you can try again, which usually gets it to catch. Smallish battery, so slow cranking in winter when it is really cold out is not unexpected.
Good luck!
Today
Other popular topics in this forum...
