So I went out to rescue my wife on Saturday, car broke down on her on the way to Girl Scouts. Waiting on the call back from my mechanic right now. Here are the symptoms, what do you think? Check engine light came on suddenly. Engine power drastically reduced then stalled. Car will turn over but not start. A decent sized puddle of oil discovered in the garage where the car had been parked. After the fact she reports that the car had been experiencing reduced power for several days prior to the breakdown. Fuel pump maybe? She swears that the check engine light came on right before the car died, so I'm hoping she didn't burn it up.
Everything minus the oil puddle seems to indicate a bad camshaft position sensor. Hard to tell though. Could be many other things as well.
She claims not, and she's brutally honest. I just constantly lament stopping at Mazda on our way to Honda the day we bought that car. It's been nothing but trouble.
Lurker WINS!!! Cam sensor, and the oil came from a cracked oil filter. Now my question is, any correlation between the two events? Seems pretty unlikely they both occurred independently at the exact same time.
OK, so now my local guy can't properly align the cam because Mazda requires a special tool that they apparently won't sell to independent shops. Long story short is my guy got the car running but now I'm going to have to drive it to Mazda to be properly aligned to keep it from stalling and throwing up error codes. I'm having one of those "Never buy from Ford again..." moments right now, even the local Ford dealer doesn't have the tool... :angry:
