My 99 Miata recently started stalling when the clutch was depressed.
I took it for service and was told that the engine was extremely worn and had to be replaced. The service guy there, who claims 20-something years of Mazda experience, says he never saw anything like this. He said it probably wasn't worth replacing the engine and that I should think about getting a new car.
No one I've talked to thinks it's reasonable for an engine to be dead at
41K miles. That, and the fact that they cannot explain the problem makes me very uncomfortable about the idea of buying another Mazda.Doing some internet research I think the problem might be related to service bulletin 014/00R, "Ratting noise from engine". It describes a manufacturing defect affecting some 99-00 miatas (also some proteges) that leads premature wear of the thrust bearings and excessive crankshaft endplay.
That's as far as the sevice bulletin goes but if the problem goes uncorrected it will eventually lead to the bearings wearing out and the engine will start grinding itself up. This is according to other internet sources I've read and it makes sense to me. The wear of the engine will cause metal shavings to fall into the oil and be distributed around the engine causing extreme wear throughout the engine.
The Mazda tech guy claimed that the oil did in fact look very dirty, in spite of the fact that the oil was just changed at 40K.
So this theory makes sense to me. Does anyone alse have experience with this?
What I would like is to have Mazda acknowlege this defect and take responsibility for it but the car is about 1 year and 5K miles out of warranty.
Today I've brought my Miata into a different dealer for service and I'm bringing a copy of the service bulletin. Hopefully they will tell me that the defect described is the cause of the engine failure. Then I suppose that the next step is to talk to Mazda directly.
Any other ideas about how this should be approached?