wow that's kinda cool, good thing you caught that. i remember amp found his front reg. spring broken in it's bore. i don't think anyone figured out the cause either...

 

I remember that. In four pieces was it? I've checked all my front reg spings.

 

Overrevved or oil was too thick would cause that kinda failure.

Was the car run hard in a very cold climate without first warming the engine up properly?







-Ted

 

I wouldn't doubt it. I got it as a core.



Here is that pic of the broken front reg spring.

 

Wow, how the hell do you do that!





-Ted

 

ive heard of a couple fd's doing that so its one of 2 things



1. overheat the oil and everything in it for 100k miles and or 10years



2. they are proving me right that the only fd part that doesnt break is the um well fender?

 

Ted, I just so happened to save the pic a while ago and just found it, so I posted it.

 

No wonder Mazda seems to have disowned the FD on their webpage. Microsoft disowned WinME. Hmm, I can't think of any others right now.

 

What you call 'crystal structure' is actually a Repetitive Stress Fracture, like what you get when you wiggle a wire to break it. That's opposed to a Forced Rupture, where you have a shiny exposed surface.



Could be from too-thick oil, or perhaps a part was out-of-spec so that the part was flexing constantly and eventually failed with rep stress fracture. It might have been mating parts at the unfortunate extremes of their tolerances that caused rep stress.



B

 

You can probably get a new rotor set from the Mazda dealer, but it likely won't be cheap. Racing Beat lists the 15mm set in their "bargain bin" for like $40 (this is for 1 pair of rotors, inner and outer).

I would think it would still more or less pump... I had one that had a ton of slop - you could hold the outer rotor still and turns the shaft back and forth a little (looked like too much). Installed a brand new pump, and saw no difference in oil pressure.