Mazdaspeed - turbo went out

[xSkyDrAx]

I would chalk this up to be defective. Like others have mentioned, unless the car was abused to hell and back, it's pretty hard to kill the turbo in 20k miles.

Good luck with dealing with Mazda.

 

[phucheneh]

Disappoint: The 'luck' part would be in getting a turbo with a manufacturing issue that resulted in premature death. Whether it's unlucky that his turbo failed, lucky that a turbo with a problem lasted that long, or just lucky that it failed before the warranty was up, it is LUCK. Something outside of his control happened that impacted his life. We're not talking about slot machines here, we're just talking about how 'shit happens.'

Here's a better example: Your mother obviously drank heavily during her pregnancy. Is it 'unlucky' that this caused you to be born with missing IQ points? Or were you 'lucky' to simply not be stillborn? (to say nothing of the effects that that event had on the rest of the world...) Who knows; it's just random. All we can say for sure is that you are an intellectually inferior person who attempts to compensate by inventing semantical arguments and outright trolling.

 

[exar333]

They said no on the rental. More concerned on whether they will cover the car under warranty.

Never been hard on the clutch, or even tried 1/4 mile run. It's my DD.

Found all the oil change records, dropped them off. They'll see its all synthetic oil except when they did my oil change.

Not even a loaner or anything? It's your DD and it sounds like they are not in a hurry to repair it for you. My experience with Mazda is that the dealership controls a lot of what happens with series repairs on how that gets 'communicated' to Mazda USA. One dealership was trying to screw me out of a rust repair on my previous car (Mazda 6) while another went over and above to get it done. It sometimes is 'who is asking' and 'how are they asking it'...They also got me a rental for almost 2 weeks as the repair was done.

 

[Hellotalkie]

Mazda called - Turbo is dead and definitely needs replaced. They said it was approved and the part should be coming in Thursday at the earliest.

Could the turbo have harmed any other engine components? Otherwise this is great news to me.

 

[imagoon]

Not even a loaner or anything? It's your DD and it sounds like they are not in a hurry to repair it for you. My experience with Mazda is that the dealership controls a lot of what happens with series repairs on how that gets 'communicated' to Mazda USA. One dealership was trying to screw me out of a rust repair on my previous car (Mazda 6) while another went over and above to get it done. It sometimes is 'who is asking' and 'how are they asking it'...They also got me a rental for almost 2 weeks as the repair was done.

Fully agree. My dealer gave me a car for the clutch recall on the Speed6.

 

[Hellotalkie]

So I talked with the service director. Super nice.

He told me the turbo's fins curled up due to overheating with the oil being too thin. He said it may have been because the oil used by Firestone was synthetic and they used the wrong weight, and amount (4.4 quarts)

I did notice that Firestone had identified my car as a Mazda3 sport - maybe this is why they used the wrong weight and amount?

At this point he said the repair is going to happen under Mazda's dime, also mentioned it's up to Mazda if they want to talk with Firestone. He will also try to get me a loaner car approved.

 

[JCH13]

So I talked with the service director. Super nice.

He told me the turbo's fins curled up due to overheating with the oil being too thin. He said it may have been because the oil used by Firestone was synthetic and they used the wrong weight, and amount (4.4 quarts)

I did notice that Firestone had identified my car as a Mazda3 sport - maybe this is why they used the wrong weight and amount?

At this point he said the repair is going to happen under Mazda's dime, also mentioned it's up to Mazda if they want to talk with Firestone. He will also try to get me a loaner car approved.

D:

I would worry about your engine! That's about 2 quarts low! They clearly did not check the dipstick after filling your engine with oil.

 

[Hellotalkie]

D:



I would worry about your engine! That's about 2 quarts low! They clearly did not check the dipstick after filling your engine with oil.

Thing is though, I check the dipstick every other fillup and it's been full.

I think their system auto fills certain areas on the invoice. Since they had chose a mazda3 sport, that car has a different engine.

Otherwise I don't think my car would have be running for the 5,000 miles when 2 quarts of oil is missing.

 

[uclabachelor]

So I talked with the service director. Super nice.

He told me the turbo's fins curled up due to overheating with the oil being too thin. He said it may have been because the oil used by Firestone was synthetic and they used the wrong weight, and amount (4.4 quarts)

I did notice that Firestone had identified my car as a Mazda3 sport - maybe this is why they used the wrong weight and amount?

At this point he said the repair is going to happen under Mazda's dime, also mentioned it's up to Mazda if they want to talk with Firestone. He will also try to get me a loaner car approved.

Have you checked what kind of oil was used by Firestone against the recommended oil by Mazda? Either Firestone messed up and they'd have to pay up, or the dealer is blowing smoke up your ass.

 

[cbrsurfr]

I wouldn't take my lawnmower to Firestone. Dealer or change it myself.

 

[Jimzz]

I'm not a fan of firestone but mazda is giving you a bs answer.

Most 5w20 runs on the thick side while most 5w30 runs on the thin side now. So even if they used 5w20, let alone a syn oil as well, it would not have caused your issues.

Either it was a defect from the factory or something else is wrong and will show up again. So keep receipts of the oil changes and anything else you do.

 

[NutBucket]

Agreed with Jimzz 100%. What a load of BS.

WTF, does the Speed3 seriously require more than 6 quarts of oil??

 

[imagoon]

Take it to another dealer....

 

[Hellotalkie]

I'm not a fan of firestone but mazda is giving you a bs answer.

Most 5w20 runs on the thick side while most 5w30 runs on the thin side now. So even if they used 5w20, let alone a syn oil as well, it would not have caused your issues.

Either it was a defect from the factory or something else is wrong and will show up again. So keep receipts of the oil changes and anything else you do.

So should I be worried about longevity of the engine?

 

[JulesMaximus]

Luck? What luck? Are you one of those folks that think if he has a lucky rabbits foot, four leaf clovers, people praying for him and really really beleives it he will win the lottery? HA! There is no such thing as luck.

OP may have just had a turbo go bad from lack of...quality. His MazdaPeed Obviously has a lack of quality GM parts which is why the MazdaPeed forums are full of such complaints while the GM boards are not. Hmmm wonder why that might be? Just a coincidence...just luck. Keep beleibing that.

The luck part would be not buying a new car with a manufacturing defect. That is something he really could not know before hand (unless the car was spewing white smoke and grinding on the test drive) so yeah... luck. It's a valid point.

 

[JulesMaximus]

I'm not a fan of firestone but mazda is giving you a bs answer.

Most 5w20 runs on the thick side while most 5w30 runs on the thin side now. So even if they used 5w20, let alone a syn oil as well, it would not have caused your issues.

Either it was a defect from the factory or something else is wrong and will show up again. So keep receipts of the oil changes and anything else you do.

Too thin is too thin and I could see a turbocharged engine being particularly sensitive to viscosity. Not sure why Firestone would put the wrong oil in his car quite frankly (although I wouldn't put it past them) or why the OP didn't just stick to taking it to Mazda for service.

 

[disappoint]

The luck part would be not buying a new car with a manufacturing defect. That is something he really could not know before hand (unless the car was spewing white smoke and grinding on the test drive) so yeah... luck. It's a valid point.

Rather than a manufacturing defect it looks like in this particular case it was Firestone's oil change guy's fault. So would you say that the OP was just unlucky that the Firestone guy screwed up?

 

[JCH13]

Agreed with Jimzz 100%. What a load of BS.

WTF, does the Speed3 seriously require more than 6 quarts of oil??

I usually put 6.3qt in mine.

 

[NutBucket]

Wow. The only 4-pot I knew of that took that much oil was the 2.7 in my dad's Tacoma. And let me take a moment to rant about these absurd oil capacities. What happened to the old days of a "4 quart" change? Is it that hard to make the oil capacity a round number? Stupid engineers! Or is it the bean counters?

 

[Hellotalkie]

Meh I've been taking my cars for years to this firestone. I think the issue was Firestone's system didn't correctly identify my vehicle.

But I do know my car was not two quarts less, I checked the dpi stick right before I got the car towed. It was completely full.

Which leads to the oil being too thin. I can assume that since the sheet says the quantity was wrong, that the weight of oil was wrong too.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Rather than a manufacturing defect it looks like in this particular case it was Firestone's oil change guy's fault. So would you say that the OP was just unlucky that the Firestone guy screwed up?

You were blaming Mazda for their lack of quality... which may or may not be substantiated. It may or may not be because of the different viscosity oil Firestone used. It may just be that the OP picked a car that got a bad batch of turbos. Fact is they're all moot points since Mazda is warrantying it and we'll never know because Mazda sure isn't going to publish the findings after they analyze the turbo they remove from the OP's car.

 

[jlee]

I'm no engineer, but I think you'd run into bearing failure prior to overheating if you had poor enough oil that you overheated a watercooled turbo.

 

[yottabit]

The MS3 has a cool down mode of some sort. I think, but haven't confirmed, that the cooling system will continue to circulate after the car is shut down in order to more gently cool off the engine and turbo. I know I can hear the cooling fans, and what sounds like a small electric pump, running after I shut my MS3 off. If one is REALLY worried about cooling off the turbo, get a turbo timer for $100.

Letting the turbo cool off is a pretty archaic concept now... I think you'd have to go back to 90s car owners manuals to find any reference suggesting that outright (and more prominent in the 80s)

IIRC almost all water cooled turbos have a thermal siphon effect that happens after you shut the car down. So if the turbo is really hot coolant will continue to circulate through, that's why the radiator fan stays on, etc. In some situations there may also be an electric coolant pump that keeps the fluid moving.

It's a perpetuated myth from the early days of turbos. If you swap in a big turbo and do some really hard pulls then yeah you may want a turbo timer. But a new OEM vehicle isn't going to require extended idle periods before shutting the car off.

The only thing I can think of that could have caused that damage at 20k miles would be if someone full boosted it on a COLD start, when it was around 30 degrees or less. That could roast it pretty quick because then the turbo could possibly not be getting any oil at all for all intents and purposes. Esp. if they used too thick of a weight. I think most modern cars even have boost limiters at cold temps, but not sure about the MS3. Even then you would have probably had to do this every day in a long Alaskan winter for me to believe that that caused the turbo to fail at 20k

If the shaft was out of balance from the factory then grenading at 20k miles sounds about right so I think that's probably what happened (as others have said- mfr defect) Sounds like they are trying to shift the blame to Firestone as a diversion. Overheating causing the fins to curl is pretty funny. Wobbly shaft turning your journal bearings into a hourglass shape over time, progressively for 20k miles until shaft play is enough for fins to contact housing makes more sense imo. This would be consistent with everything going fine until kaboom.

 

[thedarkwolf]

Maybe Firestone put 90w gear oil in it then I might buy the oil being the problem . But going from 10w30 to 0w20 isn't going to make a damn difference to the turbo.

 

[Wuzup101]

Letting the turbo cool off is a pretty archaic concept now... I think you'd have to go back to 90s car owners manuals to find any reference suggesting that outright (and more prominent in the 80s)

IIRC almost all water cooled turbos have a thermal siphon effect that happens after you shut the car down. So if the turbo is really hot coolant will continue to circulate through, that's why the radiator fan stays on, etc. In some situations there may also be an electric coolant pump that keeps the fluid moving.

It's a perpetuated myth from the early days of turbos. If you swap in a big turbo and do some really hard pulls then yeah you may want a turbo timer. But a new OEM vehicle isn't going to require extended idle periods before shutting the car off.

The only thing I can think of that could have caused that damage at 20k miles would be if someone full boosted it on a COLD start, when it was around 30 degrees or less. That could roast it pretty quick because then the turbo could possibly not be getting any oil at all for all intents and purposes. Esp. if they used too thick of a weight. I think most modern cars even have boost limiters at cold temps, but not sure about the MS3. Even then you would have probably had to do this every day in a long Alaskan winter for me to believe that that caused the turbo to fail at 20k

If the shaft was out of balance from the factory then grenading at 20k miles sounds about right so I think that's probably what happened (as others have said- mfr defect) Sounds like they are trying to shift the blame to Firestone as a diversion. Overheating causing the fins to curl is pretty funny. Wobbly shaft turning your journal bearings into a hourglass shape over time, progressively for 20k miles until shaft play is enough for fins to contact housing makes more sense imo. This would be consistent with everything going fine until kaboom.

Have to agree with this. The fins curling is actually pretty funny. There is probably no weight of oil that firestone carries that could have destroyed that turbo that fast.