Mazda Problems

Clearly water is getting into the car and causing your problem, so the trick is to find where it’s getting in. For start, have a feel around the seats and carpets to see if you can feel a damp patch. That will help narrow down the entry point. So will locking the car up on a warm day and noting which windows fog up.

Once you’ve done that you can start looking closely at all the rubber seals around the windows and doors as these are a likely culprit. Believe it or not, even a simple leaf or twig stuck to the rubber sealing surface can allow rainwater in, and any little nick or tear in the rubber can do likewise. It might sound basic, but are all the windows closing properly? Does the car have a sunroof, as these are notorious for letting water in even when they’re closed?

If you can find a volunteer, have them sit in the car while you take a garden hose to it. If the leak is a bad one, they might be able to spot it. Other times, though, the car needs to be moving for the water to be forced or even sucked in.

You should also check the level of coolant in your radiator or overflow bottle. If the heater matrix inside the car is leaking coolant, you’ll get the same symptoms over time. The clue there is that if the heater is leaking, the level in the radiator will fall.

Designed to fill the gap between the Mazda CX-3 and CX-5, the CX-30 is closer to the smaller CX-3 in terms of interior space. So make sure it’s big enough for a pair of growing kids before committing.

The big problem as far as your preferences and the Evolve model go is that it’s not available in all-wheel-drive. I agree with you that AWD is definitely preferable in a car that will be used by younger drivers. So while the G25 Touring (the cheapest AWD model with the bigger engine) costs a cool $7000 more than the FWD Evolve, you are getting that bigger engine as well as a fair bit of equipment, not to mention the AWD platform.

The other option I’d be looking at for young drivers is Mazda’s Vision Technology package which (for an extra $1300 on the AWD Touring model) adds semi-autonomous cruise-control, front cross-traffic warning, 360-degree monitoring and driver-fatigue monitoring.

This is a classic case of the dealer quoting you the factory price for the factory part. Which means the part will be brand-new and identical to the one that’s broken. The problem with parts like these is that they don’t tend to break very often, so there are no cheaper brands of replacement parts available.

The first thing to do would be to try an independent workshop, maybe even a Mazda specialist, who is very likely to be able to carry out this job for considerably less money (and I agree; $2000-plus to replace a manual seat base in a five-year-old car is getting up there).

Your second option is to do what older-car owners having been doing for decades and hit the wrecking yards. You’re looking for a crashed CX-9 which an undamaged seat base. Which, if it’s the same model and trim level, should bolt right in with few hassles. Make sure the replacement base you’ve found hasn’t been bent, twisted or otherwise damaged in the crash that led the car to the wrecking yard in the first place. But all things being equal, it would be a simple job for a competent mechanic and could save you many hundreds of dollars.

To be honest, like you, I’m a bit surprised at the quoted price for a new seat base, given that the adjuster is a manual one and not electrically-powered, which should mean it’s a pretty simple device.

Despite the Mazda 3 growing in size over the years (and gaining about 100kg depending on the model and specification) the boot size hasn’t improved in the 11 years between the models you’ve asked about.

The 2007 Mazda 3 sedan had a boot measuring 416 litres, while its 2018 opposite number could fit eight litres less with a total of 408 litres. The 2018 hatchback had even less luggage capacity with just 308 litres.

As an aside, when comparing boot sizes, it’s important to know the exact method the manufacturer has used to arrive at the figure in the brochure. There are different methods and they have a huge effect on the outcome. Presumably, Mazda hasn’t changed its measurement method over the years, so the comparison in this case stands.

The symptoms you’re experiencing all sound like they have something to do with the body computer(s) on the car. So it’s conceivable that a bad batch of computers on Mazda’s production line could affect more than one car. And if that’s the case, you’ve just been unlucky. That said, Mazda is not exactly a stranger to body computer glitches, and Mazda 3 built between 2015 and 2017 were, in fact, recalled to fix just such a problem that was affecting the operation of the windscreen wipers.

If you’re unhappy with Mazda’s approach, you can contact the ACCC to try to organise a resolution. But if the second car is only throwing up bogus tyre-pressure alerts and hasn’t started having other problems yet, then you should give Mazda the chance to put it right. The other problems may never develop, but if they do, I reckon you’d have a decent moral case for getting your money back. That said, Australia doesn’t have the `lemon laws’ that, say, the USA, has so getting a refund is not a simple matter.

The Mazda 2 is a great choice. It has always been towards the front of the small hatchbacks when it comes to safety and is definitely one of the better littlies to actually drive, too.

Mazda facelifted the 2 in 2017 and took the opportunity to add blind-spot monitoring and rear-cross traffic alert to the vehicle at that point in time. The catch is that the safety tech was only standard on the more expensive models and both the Neo and Maxx versions missed out. You could option that package when you ordered a Neo or Maxx, but it cost extra, and some people didn’t see the value in it.

So, if you’re shopping for a second-hand Mazda 2 Neo or Maxx, make sure you check carefully that the options you want are fitted. If you’re buying brand-new, no problem, because the most recent upgrade to the 2 saw rear-cross traffic alert and blind-sport monitoring become standard across the range. Lane-departure warning and lane-keep assist also became standard at that time. Significantly, autonomous emergency braking was standard on all Mazda 2s built after the 2017 facelift, making the car a very safe package.

As for alternatives, the world is your oyster with $30,000 in your pocket. There are lots of really good, safe cars out there in that price bracket, but, again, the Mazda 2 should definitely be on your short-list.

US-based Bose is certainly working on a system that will cancel out noise in cars. At the moment, though, it’s not available and will probably only be fitted to brand-new cars as standard equipment. At first anyway, because tech like this has a habit of tricking down to the aftermarket. However, that’s not much help to you right now.

Wearing noise-cancelling headphones is not practical (or sensible, or legal) so you need to look at an old-school solution such as the tyres you mentioned or stripping the car’s interior and fitting a noise-suppressing matting under the carpet and inside the doors. If it’s any consolation, it’s not your imagination; Mazdas for the last 20 years have been harshly criticised for their interior noise levels when the competition seems to do it better.

Ironically, active noise cancellation technology as proposed by Bose is not to tame mechanically noisy cars, but to remove wind and road noise from electric cars which are otherwise so quiet, these secondary noises become a big nuisance.

You’ll almost certainly cause the dashboard to present you with a `check engine’ warning light, Brett, as blocking off the Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) valve is an intrinsic part of the vehicle’s emission controls. Having the vehicle go into limp-home mode is a very real possibility as well.

But perhaps more financially damaging would be the consequences of being caught driving the vehicle with a blocked-off EGR. The government takes a very dim view of anybody disabling any part of a car’s emission controls and the fines for doing so can be huge.

However, I know this is a real issue for many owners of modern turbo-diesels. The problem is that soot from the exhaust gas is mixed with oily fumes from the crankcase and then ingested by the engine as part of keeping emissions down. But the mixture of oil and soot can form a black gunge that can block the intake system. Really, though, blocking the EGR is a fairly clumsy way of getting around this. My advice would be to fit an oil separator which should keep the oily mist from the crankcase ventilation out of the equation.

It would be a brave person to make any sort of predictions based on the Coronavirus. Suffice to say that as consumer confidence falls (and it must be at some kind of 100-year low right now) people tend to keep their powder dry and their cash to themselves. On that basis, I’d imagine you’d be welcomed with open arms (figuratively) at any sort of new-car dealership right now.

Whether that will make too much difference on the price of a new vehicle is up to the dealership in question, but if you can afford it, now is probably a very good time to shop for a brand-new car. Assuming lock-down laws allow you to drive it anyway. And don’t presume that the end of the crisis will see the end of cheaper cars; the damage being done to the economy will takes years or even decades to undo.