Mazda 3 MPS, does it have a reliable engine?
Discussion
Reliability is a broad topic really. It depends if the cars have been mapped by someone known (mainly the American tuners via COBB/Versatune) or just a random company down the road. Stock they are very hardy things!
Common issues with the engine, and its mainly the engine that has some fundamental issues.
VVT Timing - Starts to slap on start up for a short time. Means that its starting to stretch. Some very good specialists in the country. Cost is around £600. So think of it as simple as a cambelt cost.
Chocolate Rods - The MPS can throw a leg out of bed. Badly tuned cars are obviously worse for this, many thoughts around why they do it. One of the common ones is wide open throttle in a high gear at low revs.
K04 Turbo - Not entirely the MPS's fault as the turbo has issues in other cars. Commonly thought that the stock banjo bolt feeds too much oil into the turbo at the higher RPM idle at start and the oil sits and eats away at the oil seals. Easy to see as you will see blue smoke coming out of the exhaust at idle. Or another check is to run the car then after 10/15 minutes give it a rev and see if you create a nice smoke screen behind you. Well looked after cars that have frequent oil changes, to 5w40 (up from the Mazda recommended 5w30) will help and the fitting of a more restrictive banjo bolt will probably fair a little better.
It is fair to say though for all MPS's that have issues there are more than a few that have gone over 100K miles without detonating or having problems with the K04. But these cars are cheap for what they are. So set aside a little money and you will be golden.
Also as they are so cheap, many people break cars so spare parts are quite plentiful.
Common issues with the engine, and its mainly the engine that has some fundamental issues.
VVT Timing - Starts to slap on start up for a short time. Means that its starting to stretch. Some very good specialists in the country. Cost is around £600. So think of it as simple as a cambelt cost.
Chocolate Rods - The MPS can throw a leg out of bed. Badly tuned cars are obviously worse for this, many thoughts around why they do it. One of the common ones is wide open throttle in a high gear at low revs.
K04 Turbo - Not entirely the MPS's fault as the turbo has issues in other cars. Commonly thought that the stock banjo bolt feeds too much oil into the turbo at the higher RPM idle at start and the oil sits and eats away at the oil seals. Easy to see as you will see blue smoke coming out of the exhaust at idle. Or another check is to run the car then after 10/15 minutes give it a rev and see if you create a nice smoke screen behind you. Well looked after cars that have frequent oil changes, to 5w40 (up from the Mazda recommended 5w30) will help and the fitting of a more restrictive banjo bolt will probably fair a little better.
It is fair to say though for all MPS's that have issues there are more than a few that have gone over 100K miles without detonating or having problems with the K04. But these cars are cheap for what they are. So set aside a little money and you will be golden.
Also as they are so cheap, many people break cars so spare parts are quite plentiful.
Thank you everyone who’s gave me the replies, I appreciate you spending your time to give me a better idea. I’ll look into everything everyone has said and make a desicion. Sorry for a slow reply though, as I’m a new account I couldn’t log in for a while because there had been abuse from new accounts or something
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