CrimsonPride

I am posting in this forum because Rx-8 owners are the only ones on this site that will be looking to Mazda for warranty coverage.



In 2001, I encouraged and helped my sister purchase a 2000 626 from Hertz. She kept it until late 2007 and had a very good experience with it. She liked the new 6. I helped her pick out one to buy in Feb. '08, again from Hertz.



Car had 24,000 miles when purchased. By the time she put a few thousand miles on it we noticed some engine noise. Gradually became somewhat worse. At about 31,000 miles I decided to check it out and see what it was. Took the car to the dealer in June 09. They said that it was a rod knocking. They kept the car for several weeks, finally giving me the answer that it would not be covered. Car was supposed to be covered until Jan, 2010 or 50,000 miles. Hertz sent the dealer their oil change records and I had records and receipts from the couple of changes that I had performed. I talked to the customer service people at Mazda North America, however the district representative did not call me back. He relayed a message to me though customer service that he agreed with the conclusion of the tech line that had denied the claim because of “abuse.” When I questioned them further they stated that it was from, “lack of maintenance.”



I personally removed the engine from the vehicle, took off the right side head, timing cover, oil pan, lower cylinder block, crankshaft, and one piston. There was one bad rod bearing and corresponding scored crankshaft journal. Everything else in the engine showed little or no discernable wear. You could even clearly see in all of the cylinders the cross-hatch pattern from the honing. I measured several specs with micrometers such as all of the crankshaft journals and the cylinder dimensions for the piston of the damaged rod bearing. Everything I measured was at new specs. I had Precision Automotive in Birmingham, AL inspect the crankshaft and turn the rod journals. The bad journal needed so little that turning all of them .010 was all that was needed to smooth out the damaged one and to get all of them even. With the machine work, gaskets, new rod, and rod bearings and the new lower cylinder block and head bolts required, everything totaled $650.



When the dealer had the car they told me they were instructed by Mazda to take a sample of the oil and to remove the oil pan. Mazda eventually had them remove the pan a second time. I don’t know why they did this. The service manager told me that they did not remove any of the rod caps. Having the oil pan off, it would have been easy to remove a couple of the rod caps to see if there were any that were not damaged. I did this myself after bringing the car back home before removing the engine. Also, you could see up to the cylinder walls of some of the pistons that were relatively high in their bores and tell that the honing pattern was still there. The point is that it would have been relatively easy to gather information as to the overall condition of the engine given that their standard procedure is to remove the oil pan in such cases. It was easy to tell that the engine had never been run low on oil and that it had been maintained. The problem was not only isolated to one bearing, the rest of the engine looked like new. If a company would not cover something like this, what would they be willing to cover under warranty?



Despite the Magnuson-Moss warranty act, the advice of the service manager was that the car should have been brought to them so that they would have some maintenance history on the car. He said that he tells new car owners that like to do their own oil changes at least to bring it to him every other time. Of course I don’t agree with this on principle, but if you are going to put out the money for a new Mazda this might help your odds should you encounter a problem. If you don’t give corporate anyone to blame for oil changes but their own dealers, this I think would put them in an untenable position in attempting to deny a claim. My strategy is different however, having the knowledge and tools to work on my own vehicles, I doubt that I will ever buy a new car again.



Don’t rest on the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act in thinking that dealers will have to accept owner maintenance. To the best of my knowledge, this is just another example of legislation that has no teeth.

phinsup

That's unfortunate, many of us (myself included) don't like spending $85 on a full synthetic oil change, as with any warranty it's really only as good as the company providing the warranty. Actually I am a little surprised that they warranty Hertz fleet vehicles at all, I thought hertz bought those for less money without a warranty, but that's besides the point.



Anyhow have you dealt with Mazda North America direct on this issue at all? I have dealt with them once regarding a dealer being a pain in the *** and they got right on it, everything was taken care of.

CrimsonPride

I just talked to someone at the call center. The area rep did not call me back.



Legally I'm sure that there is a warranty obligation. On the 2000 626 I mentioned they replaced the air conditioner compressor under warranty at 49K+ miles. But, I wonder if their working position on rental vehicles is to just disallow oil related coverage.

j9fd3s

too bad. i think though, that as long as you can prove the oil was changed, legally its still under warranty, unless there was some prior voiding of it because it was a hertz car.



i would think that if the car had no warranty on it when you bought it, they would have made you sign something that said you knew this, but ??

CrimsonPride

The cars definitely come with the remainder of the factory warranty for the model/year. But if they're just not going to cover it you just come to the point of having to sue them or walk away. Or, at least that's all I could come up with as my alternatives. Their "out" seemed to be saying that it was abused and therefore not covered. I could not actually prove my oil changes either. I had receipts for purchased oil and filters. One would think that this should be good enough though. The thing that makes me the most skeptical of them is that "abuse" and "lack of maintenance" were both mentioned. Makes me question weather or not they really had a reasoning behind their position.