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Mazda MPV: Problems & Solutions
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We are looking at a white ES. There is also a program car on the lot w/6,000 miles. What is a good price for a new ES?
We have looked at all of the mini-vans. The MPV owners seem to be the happiest bunch! We drove a Windstar SEL last night. It was very nice, but we can't get over the reliability record. Odessy is supposed to "drive on water", but the interior is U-G-L-Y!!
Appreciate any advice. Thanks!
During your reading please notice the number of problems and postings of all the minivans you are considering. I believe you will find that the MPV has less of both, problems and postings. Certainly, budget wise anyone with an intelligent bone must seriously consider the MPV. You should also consider the unique features of the MPV that are not offered in other vehicles for the same price. i.e. Roll down windows, slide by side seating, tumble 3rd seats, and awesome sound system. I also found that the MPV's roof rack was extremely useful and well priced as compared to the ODY. Generally, you will find a fully loaded MPV with leather, roof rack and 6 cd changer for about $24 - $25k. Thats at least $3 - $5 less than the ODY without the dealer markup.
Finally, I think the features are extremely applicable to a family. Kids need air! They will spill and leather cleans nicely, and when they start to fit you can separate them with the touch of your finger. Word to the wise, Never ever never, put two siblings on the second row of seats without having captains chairs!
For example, there is talk about carrying a 4'x8' piece of plywood in the cargo area. That is great if you do that. I've never done that in any kind of van during my 35 years of life, so that is a pretty useless feature. However, if I do need a large area (not just cubic volume, but area) then that is a useful feature.
Since a minivan is used to carry people, ask yourself, how many people are we going to have in here 90% of the time. If you can, take those people with you and test getting in and out of the van. We took our carseat and tested putting the baby (or a doll when the baby was with grandma naping!) in each vehicle we were interested in. Why, we wanted to know if there were any odd angles and contortions we needed to go through to get in and out of the vehicle. During the test drive, my wife check on access to the baby, with her sitting in many seats. And since she is the driver 75% of the time, she drove it on her daily trips.
We took the van home to see how it was to park in our garage. (With the exception of the Odyssey, we were not allowed a lengthy test drive.)
We tried all of the goodies and drove with and without the sound system.
Bottom line, make a list of what you want and be objective when the saleperson makes the pitch for his/her product.
There is a big difference between needs and wants. We all have both and you must satisfy all of your needs and a fair amount of your wants if you are going to be happy with any vehicle you purchase.
Cheers,
TB
If everyone took a very practical approach to this very expensive purchase, there would be a lot more happy drivers out on the road. Hey, maybe road rage would be a thing of the past!
Baraby - how bad is your ticking sound? On mine, it is persistent ticking like from the valve tappets with too much clearance. This usually happens when the engine has too many miles on it. Is yours louder when parked in an enclosed space?
Our Mazda dealer was eager to have us test-drive unaccompanied-- didn't even try to come along. That gave us plenty of opportunity to try it in our garage, parking lot, highway, etc.... I also rented a van (another brand) for a day while we were trying to decide between van and sedan since I'd always said "I'll NEVER buy a mini-van."
We've had our MPV since September, and I still love it. (If only it got 30 miles to the gallon AND had a 250 horsepower engine, it'd be perfect.)
One of the best resources I've ever found for dealing with alignment problems is a specialty frame shop. They have equipment to repair vehicles (including unibody) which have had their frames damaged. You may want to have them look at your vehicle to get a really accurate assessment of the alignment. They should also be able to determine whether any chassis/frame subassemblies are mis-aligned.
To find a frame shop, check your yellow pages. You could also contact body shops in your area -- they should know of reputable frame shops that you could try.
Just a thought......
If you want the best minivan deal, that drives and maneuvers closest to a car, with the most flexible seating in any vehicle, then the MPV is for you. Check the MPV owner's lists for more info. Good Luck.
#216 of 225: Desperatly seeking help (nadirachris) Thu 15 Jun '00 (06:01 AM)
I still love my Silver MPV.
If you recall, around the 65-70 mark, the vibration was just terrible. If you let go of the steering wheel, you can see the steering wheel shake back and forth on it's own. Additionally, it still pulled to the left despite the dealer doing a re-alignment.
I rotated the front tires only from left to right. I inspected the tires while rotating them and I believe that they may be "cupping". Anyways, after rotating them, I found the vibration to be even worse than before and now my van pulls to the right!!!!
Therefore, I am under the suspicion that my tires are bad and one or both tires probably has a slipped belt or something. Additionally, the cupping has probably damaged both front tires.
I can't do anything this week, but next week, I'm bringing the van back in and requesting they inspect the tires and replace them under warranty. I first complained about the problem when there was only 1K on the van, so even though the van has 5K on it now, they better not try to pro-rate the value on the tires.
My concern is now about the rear tires. I don't know what condition they are in. I'm going to have them check them at the very least, but I'm not sure If I can demand they replace them also, since I don't know that there is anything wrong with them.
Finally, what replacement tires should I expect to get, or better yet, request to get? I have the 16" tires from the touring package. Those are the Dunlops. It doesn't seem like the Dunlops have been very good tires, so will I likely get the same tires or have they changed them?
Although the wiper arm is still attached, you can spin the arm clockwise in full circle. However, it doesn't work. You can hear the motor trying to do something, but somehow, the rear wiper came unattached.
Has anyone experienced this problem? If so, is it something I can fix, or should I have the dealer look at it when I bring the van in for the tires?
Boy, I'm hoping I can eliminate these pesky little problems. If I can get the tires fixed and the wiper fixed, the only thing left standing in the way of a near perfect minivan is the sunroof that doesn't have a deflector!!!! Still can't use that sunroof without causing too much noise!!! I'm holding out for a factory deflector though instead of rigging up one from Pep Boys or something. I'm not that desperate yet.
One last thing. Gas mileage is holding steady at 18MPG. I can live with that.
I am about to rotate my tires for the first time, at 5000 miles. It is my understanding, from the owner's manual (8-30) and elsewhere, that the tires should be kept on the same side of the vehicle and rotated front to back only. The manual also says to rotate every 3,750 miles. This seems very frequent. Is anybody rotating their tires this often? Thanks for any recommendations.
rrbhokies, You might find the tire reviews at this site useful.
http://www.tirerack.com/
Dunlop SP Sport 4000
Ultra High Performance All-Season Tire Comparison
For what it's worth, I haven't had any problems with the Dunlops, or with pulling or vibration. Good luck and let us know what happens.
Anyone having the same problem ?
BTW, I too have the front, upper vents almost not blowing any air when on the upper & lower vents position... Think it's a characteristic, not a problem as I read earlier posts.
Silver (roasting his older son way out there) Driver
I can't get to the dealer until next week, but I'm going to push them to do a full check on all four tires, plus check the alignment. I'm sure they are gonna love me trying to tell them what to do, but I've been inconvenienced for too long now to let this go any longer.
bertwang - Thanks for the tip on the wiper. I'll go see about it. I'm not sure what you mean by the base cover though. Could you be more specific??
I don't know if that's how all wiper arms are attached, but I'm not sure I like the fact that it's only held on by that little nut, nor do I like the fact that it appears that the nut comes loose this easily.
Had the nut loosed just one or two more turns, the entire wiper arm would have fallen completely off the van. That would have been real nice, huh???
A word to everyone: Even if your rear wiper is working properly, you may want to check the nut to make sure that it's fully tighened and hasn't come loose at all.
One more quibble regarding the wiper arm. Most rear wiper arms have some kind of plastic rest for the rear wiper to rest against when it's not in use. The MPV has none. I'm not an engineer, so I'm not sure if it really needs one, but I thought it was worth noting.
If you're concerned, you could use a little bit of "loctite" on the threads of the nut to make sure it doesn't loosen again.
the brake system work. But so far everything
is OK with our LX (more than 5000miles).
miles. Just finished an 1100 mile trek from NE Texas to Northern Iowa and the van handled great. The only problem we've encountered was with a defective left turn signal switch. We noticed it started blinking twice as fast as the right. The local dealership replaced it without any problems. They also made an adjustment to the emissions sensor that Mazda sent us a recall
notice about. Gas mileage averaged 23 mpg/highway on our trip with the AC & Cruise.
Let us know how it goes next week at your dealer. We're supposed to find out about getting those two bad tires replaced next week. The steering wheel is still holding steady. We've put almost 5000 miles on it since they fixed the alignment! Yesterday it hit 11,111 miles!
I selected the MPV ES and was able to get an $800 under invoice deal. I felt so confident that I made the right decision until four days into ownership the transmission failed!
I took delivery of the vehicle with an odometer reading of 20 miles. I drove a total of 270 miles (city/highway)until the problem occured.
The dealer is currently replacing the transmission which is a very extensive process. Almost everything under the hood is removed including the front suspension/struts. It's ugly!!
I would like to hear from anyone with knowledge of a job such as this as to their thoughts of how it should turn out. Will the integrity of my MPV be compromised?
The mechanic believes it is a Ford transmission that is in these vehicles.
1) Alignment problems, leans left. We brought it in a week after we got it and they did an alignment but it did not work. The second time, they replaced the 2 front tires, aligned it and balanced it. Works great now, not alignment problems
2) Front end makes a "popping" sound at low speeds (turn corners, accelerating, decelerating and going into reverse). It does NOT make these sounds from a cold start. After driven around for a half hour, the popping starts. At high speeds I do not notice it. I can also hear the sounds if I rock the van. I took it in (also when I took it in for the alignment problem) they said it was the front struts, so they replaced them. But it still does it. Going to call them tomorrow for more help. Anyone else have/had this problem? Do you know what the solution is?
I would check motor/transmission mounts. Can you make the noise occur be rocking the van back and forth instead of up and down or left to right? If the noise is present during forward/backward rocking, I would suspect a loose or fail(ed) mount.
You indicated rocking, but did not indicate the direction of the rocking.
I hope it is the mounts and not a complete transmission.
Cheers,
TB
We ran the AC all the time. Temperatures ranged from 85 to 90 and humid. Air worked great. Used the recirculate feature to cool the van down, then clicked over to fresh air. Usually ran the front air on 1 or 2 and the the rear AC on 1 or not at all.
No problems with pulling. Is the pulling primarily associated with the Touring Package, 16 inch tires, and Dunlops???
Sorry to hear about transmission problems. Perhaps the silver lining is better now than later???
Take care.
Silve"R" Drive"R"
at those speeds i hear a very slight wind whistling somewhere in the front area. this isnt really a problem but am just wondering: is this common with the mpv or should i bring the van to the dealer for a look see while its early?
My 2 cents.
DLNC
meera - thanks, originally i didnt want the blue since i just traded in my blue axxess, but my wife liked this color. now its beginning to grow on me too.
i have no roof rack so will check other possibilities and will let you guys know if i find it. when all else fail ill bring it to the dealer.
to all... what power issue? this van runs great!
NHTSA CAMPAIGN ID Number: 00V113002
Vehicle Description: Mini vans equipped with original equipment 16 inch tires.
Owners will be sent accurate tire information labels and owner manual inserts. In addition, owners of MPV's with 16" tires will be advised to check their tire pressure to make sure that the tires are inflated to 35 psi. Owner notification is expected to begin during June 2000.
This info is available at
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/problems/recalls/recmmy1.cfm
Search for Make: Mazda Truck (be sure to include "Truck")
Model: MPV
Year: 2000
I haven't noticed any pulling problems or some of the other things people have been reporting, but my windshield wipers seem to "skip" when operating. The windshield wipes nice, but the noise and seeing the skipping action is irritating to say the least. Almost like I was running the wipers when the windshield was dry (I hope I am giving an accurate idea of what is happening). They skip (but wipe) on the down stroke. Any idea how to fix this?? The noise(eh, eh, eh, eh) is bothering me.
Anyway, I also failed to notice what at first appeared to be water spots on trim on driver's side (driver's and second-row passenger) windows. I called next day and dealer said to bring car back and they'd have a look. They said detail man could clean and buff trim and it would be fine and to make an appointment for following day to have both problems resolved. I dutifully did so and waited while they discovered 1) they could not fix air leak and wanted me to make an appointment for a week later with an air-leak specialist who visits weekly... Detail man worked on car with no results and they ordered trim, so appointment was set for last Friday. I called Friday afternoon to make sure work was done and service dept. told me work had been completed. And today, receipt ($0 -- warranty work ) was ready and waiting. It said that wind noise was equal on both sides of car (not true) so no work was done. And it said that trim was replaced under windows. It was replaced under ONE window. Supervisors were (of course!!) gone. I didn't have to sign anything saying this was satisfactory work or anything, but really!! My questions: What should I ask for when I call the service manager on Monday? Are a lot of people having wind noise from one side? (Ours is not noticeable except on freeways/tollways.) Other than these rather small problems, we love the car. But I am beginning to hate the dealer. Glad they were supposedly doing trim work instead of engine or transmission. It would not be so clear to me that they had signed off on work not done!