Mazda E1800 Pricing and Specs

The CX-5 is a well regarded vehicle in the trade with a good reputation for going the distance and remaining reliable. However, that’s a lot of kilometres for any vehicle.

Which means, you must approach this one purely on its individual merits. That starts with the service history. Unless you can find a complete, detailed record that proves the car has been absolutely maintained correctly, you could be taking a huge punt. You’d also want to learn as much as you can about who owned it and how it was driven. For instance, 300,000km of gentle highway running is a lot different to the same distance in city traffic or towing a trailer around.

Even then, it would want to be really cheap as you might easily find it’s getting very close to the end of its useful life. That said, a well maintained, carefully driven CX-5 can cover this sort of mileage, so maybe this one has some life left in it. Maybe.

You should be guided by your mechanic’s quote for either outcome. In some cases, solenoids are relatively cheap to buy and don’t require too much labour to replace. But, depending on the vehicle, they can also be very expensive and require more or less a full transmission strip-down to remove and replace.

You also need to assess the condition of the whole transmission as putting new parts into a worn gearbox will only delay the inevitable.

I’d be taking a long, hard look at the battery. When a battery is at the end of its useful life, it will often show a 12-volt charge with a simple volt-meter check. But, when you turn the key and place a big load on the battery, it goes weak at the knees and won’t turn the engine over.

Have the battery load tested. This will tell you more about what’s going on. The reason the car started with a jump-start form another car is that the second car’s battery has stepped up to do the job your car’s battery can’t.