Mazda turbo woes

[Possum19]

Hi all,

My 2016 diesel estate Sport Nav (175PS variant) has just ticked over 100k trouble-free miles. However, an orange engine warning light came on and it turned out to be a mass air flow sensor that's been reset and seems fine now.

Having said that I have noticed recently that sometimes the turbo isn't kicking in, a bit like horrendous turbo lag. I can change gear and it works, but I'm worried it might be an electrical issue related to the MAFS as above or a more fundamental issue with the turbo sticking or leaking.

Apologies for any vagueness or assumptions, I'm no mechanic!

Any help or experience with turbos not performing much appreciated before I have to start throwing money at it!

[joropug]

Possum19 said:

Hi all,

My 2016 diesel estate Sport Nav (175PS variant) has just ticked over 100k trouble-free miles. However, an orange engine warning light came on and it turned out to be a mass air flow sensor that's been reset and seems fine now.

Having said that I have noticed recently that sometimes the turbo isn't kicking in, a bit like horrendous turbo lag. I can change gear and it works, but I'm worried it might be an electrical issue related to the MAFS as above or a more fundamental issue with the turbo sticking or leaking.

Apologies for any vagueness or assumptions, I'm no mechanic!

Any help or experience with turbos not performing much appreciated before I have to start throwing money at it!

Unplug the MAF and go for a drive, it will go into a default state that will ignore MAF values but if it drives better than yeah your MAF probably needs replacing.

However....putting it into the default mode might turn other things off. In my instance, this test identified the EGR was faulty.

[Mr MXT]

Is that the 2.2 unit?

[Draxindustries1]

Turbo boost is controlled by the ecu and the information it receives from the various sensors around the engine.
It's very likely the air flow sensor at fault as its thrown up a code.
As above, unplug it and go for a drive to see how the car behaves ..

[Possum19]

Mr MXT said:

Is that the 2.2 unit?

Yep the more powerful variant...at least when the turbo works!

[Possum19]

Draxindustries1 said:

Turbo boost is controlled by the ecu and the information it receives from the various sensors around the engine.
It's very likely the air flow sensor at fault as its thrown up a code.
As above, unplug it and go for a drive to see how the car behaves ..

Thanks very much for the advice, I'll have to get on youtube to see if i can work out where the MAF sensor is!

[Byker28i]

Where do I start... We've just traded ours in 2013 unit which had the original engine with the poorly hardened camshafts that disintegrate at 30K miles - new engine, turbo when they gave us it back from the service in limp home mode. All done under warranty.
Then another new turbo less than a year later because they hadn't flushed properly - Mazda paid for that also..

Then another turbo about 6 months later, because the turbo was faulty - not that they didn't fit it right - oh no... especially when they tried to get me to pay for it at over £1500 plus vat.

But 147K miles in it, really liked the car, but the head gasket had just gone. Same symptoms as a turbo issue - which I thought it was again, went ok, then occasionally would just briefly drop power, then be ok again. Apparently these engines were known for head gasket issues.

£2.5k minimum, no-one other than Mazda would touch it and then they said it was probably more like £5k plus by the time everything was fixed on such a high mileage engine (around 100k miles on the new engine).

Mazda pulled the fault codes, my wife ignored the warning light, saying she never saw it, it went into limp mode so she drove it home like that...

Full mazda service history as well, just been serviced and it can't have been them with the water low causing the head gasket to go...


Have you pulled your fault codes? Anything showing?

[Byker28i]

Possum19 said:

Mr MXT said:

Is that the 2.2 unit?

Yep the more powerful variant...at least when the turbo works!

You know there was no difference between that and the 150bhp unit, apart from it was £30 tax for the150 unit. It's just mapping and you could map the cheap tax unit to 182bhp. There was little difference in acceleration.

P.S> do you want any roofbars?

[Possum19]

Byker28i said:

Where do I start... We've just traded ours in 2013 unit which had the original engine with the poorly hardened camshafts that disintegrate at 30K miles - new engine, turbo when they gave us it back from the service in limp home mode. All done under warranty.
Then another new turbo less than a year later because they hadn't flushed properly - Mazda paid for that also..

Then another turbo about 6 months later, because the turbo was faulty - not that they didn't fit it right - oh no... especially when they tried to get me to pay for it at over £1500 plus vat.

But 147K miles in it, really liked the car, but the head gasket had just gone. Same symptoms as a turbo issue - which I thought it was again, went ok, then occasionally would just briefly drop power, then be ok again. Apparently these engines were known for head gasket issues.

£2.5k minimum, no-one other than Mazda would touch it and then they said it was probably more like £5k plus by the time everything was fixed on such a high mileage engine (around 100k miles on the new engine).

Mazda pulled the fault codes, my wife ignored the warning light, saying she never saw it, it went into limp mode so she drove it home like that...

Full mazda service history as well, just been serviced and it can't have been them with the water low causing the head gasket to go...


Have you pulled your fault codes? Anything showing?

Ouch, sounds like a nightmare! the garage pulled a generic MAF sensor fault code, reset it, drove around and the light didn't come back on...they didn't notice any turbo issues as it's intermittent

[Possum19]

Byker28i said:

You know there was no difference between that and the 150bhp unit, apart from it was £30 tax for the150 unit. It's just mapping and you could map the cheap tax unit to 182bhp. There was little difference in acceleration.

P.S> do you want any roofbars?

Well, i guess I got suckered in, although it was one of very few available in the country when I bought it so I'm not too worried.

Roofbar-wise, I'm ok thanks and I feel there may be a joke I missing anyway...

[Nickp82]

Was it a P0101? If so, having had a bit of experience, it is likely carbon build up in the engine - a common thing with these engines.

Mazda are quite proactive in supporting customers with this issue, even if well outside of warranty. Having a decent dealer service history will help too.

I have had it on two Mazda 6s and a proper carbon clean is what is required , I can’t remember if Mazda did it completely or partly under warranty but they were very fair.

[Mr MXT]

Nickp82 said:

Was it a P0101? If so, having had a bit of experience, it is likely carbon build up in the engine - a common thing with these engines.

Mazda are quite proactive in supporting customers with this issue, even if well outside of warranty. Having a decent dealer service history will help too.

I have had it on two Mazda 6s and a proper carbon clean is what is required , I can’t remember if Mazda did it completely or partly under warranty but they were very fair.

That’s what I was going to mentioned after I asked if it was the 2.2.

Mine needed a strip down and clean after 50k miles

[Possum19]

Nickp82 said:

Was it a P0101? If so, having had a bit of experience, it is likely carbon build up in the engine - a common thing with these engines.

Mazda are quite proactive in supporting customers with this issue, even if well outside of warranty. Having a decent dealer service history will help too.

I have had it on two Mazda 6s and a proper carbon clean is what is required, I can’t remember if Mazda did it completely or partly under warranty but they were very fair.

I'm not sure the garage didn't say, I'll give them a bell and see if they have a record. Seems unlikely Mazda would help as I bought it second-hand on 30k and have added another 70k miles, so sadly no warranty left from Mazda or my purchase.

Any idea on what the cost would have been outside of the warrenty?

And thanks for replying, it's really kind

[Nickp82]

Possum19 said:

I'm not sure the garage didn't say, I'll give them a bell and see if they have a record. Seems unlikely Mazda would help as I bought it second-hand on 30k and have added another 70k miles, so sadly no warranty left from Mazda or my purchase.

Any idea on what the cost would have been outside of the warrenty?

And thanks for replying, it's really kind

You’d (hopefully) be surprised, Mazda know how common an issue it is so (again in my experience) will support out of warranty cars . Both the ones I mentioned I bought used at five or six years old, the main thing they checked was that the cars had some sort of service history with their dealers.
I have a CX-5 2.2 now as a family wagon, it’s been fine thus far but when I drive it I try to give it a good hammering every now and again.

[Possum19]

Nickp82 said:

You’d (hopefully) be surprised, Mazda know how common an issue it is so (again in my experience) will support out of warranty cars . Both the ones I mentioned I bought used at five or six years old, the main thing they checked was that the cars had some sort of service history with their dealers.
I have a CX-5 2.2 now as a family wagon, it’s been fine thus far but when I drive it I try to give it a good hammering every now and again.

Well, it can't hurt to try, thank you. A lack of dealer history mightscupper me though! But you make your choices!

It may not be the issue though as I commute 50 miles each way 3x week on motorways at a decent clip, so it certainly gets good long, high-energy runs

[Nickp82]

Possum19 said:

Well, it can't hurt to try, thank you. A lack of dealer history mightscupper me though! But you make your choices!

It may not be the issue though as I commute 50 miles each way 3x week on motorways at a decent clip, so it certainly gets good long, high-energy runs

You’d like to think that kind of driving would keep it running well. I did have an issue with the turbo on one which was caused by a damaged impeller, the car drove ok but obviously lacked a chunk of power. I seem to recall that was a fairly common thing to happen too but it was a while ago, the Mazda replacement turbo was of course ridiculous in price so I bought a reconditioned unit and had that fitted.

Either way, hope you can get it sorted without too much damage to the wallet.