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yea… weather is brutal here as well…. looking at sunday as a possibliity… …. i have to admit though that I am almost “happy” to find that… at least now there is some logical reason that I was having such difficulty…….. I would rather have to fix a problem then just go on “not knowing and wondering…” ….will keep you posted and thanks again
MM
well… I checked the coolant level again after letting it sit and to my surpise the resorvoir was empty…so i filled it and went for a drive…. ultimately it overheated and was not coming down even when moving now… I checked and reservoir was empty again…… filled it again and made it home, but barely…… next day put it in driveway and got her up to temp and now I see the problem….. seems to be leaking when system is under pressure… In all my past tests to bleed the air out, I had the cap off, so the pressure just pushed the coolant into the expansion resorvoir…. but now with the cap on, I can see it is leaking from quite possibly the water pump. either that or the heater core because its on the passenger side… though if it was the heater core I would think I would smell it inside the car.
So it is likely the water pump…. more likely the gasket has probably gotten cooked in all this running hot…. I put that water pump in myself a couple years ago and haven’t had any issue with it until now ….. I guess the only saving grace is, athough it is behind the timing belt, it is not driven by it so I think I can at least sneak it out of there without having to take the timing belt off and re-do that again….
once our weather gets out of the 30’s for a day or so I will have to get out there and pull off the timing belt cover and confirm the leak with a pressure tester….. thanks again for all the advice and help
Matt M
thanks for the advice…. I spent about 40 min with it over the weekend and ran it with the reservoir cap off and watched it cycle…. I kept is at 2500 rpms until she hit about 212 degrees and the fans came on and cooled it to 206 and they went off….. I watched it cycle like this a couple times….. (while this happened the fluid level in the reservoir went down… so it got sucked in… and I checked both hoses (upper and lower) were appropriately hot……so I feel the system is working properly….
I then cut the throttle back to idle… 600 rpm and up came some coolant and overflowed a little… a good couple of cups worth…. and the temps went up and the fans came on, but it seemed to hold at 222 degrees … not going any hotter…. and as soon as I gave it throttle, the temp would drop back down… and if I held it there (2500) it would go all the way back down to 206 and the fans would go off as expected….. — after this, I then released the throttle back to idle again and more coolant came up and the fans came back on and the temp rose back up to 222 and stayed there.
I let it sit idle at 222 for a good 5 min and did not see any overheating, so I am hoping that what I did finially solved the problem….. So I did like you said and left they cap off the reservoir overnight to let any more air escape and the next morning I came out and the level of coolant was a little low, so I added enough to fill it to the line marked “low”.
I drove the car and had no issue, but it was a very short drive so I cannot consider it a completed test as of yet, but I wanted to thank you and run my events and findings by you to see if maybe I am missing something. Thanks again… will report back to (hopefully) say when I have a fully successful test… thanks again.
Matt Montalto
Thank you again for getting back…. seems to me that you think that the problem could just be that I haven’t gotten all the air out of the system….. and I was thinking that but I feel that its just crazy that its this hard to bleed this system…. but at least that diagnosis make logical sense…. I am going to try what you said… probably tomorrow…. I did get a chance to drive the car last night…. short trip though…. did not overheat… and the heat was working pretty well…..
Thanks so much for taking the time to help me…. will get back with some followup after I get to try this out hopefully this weekend…. have a good one and thanks again
Matt Montalto
(oh, I figured out why I wasnt getting notified to the thread replies….. mail was going my spam folder…. Fixed now… thanks a lot gmail….)
Thanks so much for getting back to me and that video (sorry for the delayed response… this car is not driven very often, so troubleshooting is difficult)…(and for some reason I never get an email from the forum to tell me you responded….)
That is probably the only video I have seen with an expansion tank and it leaves me with some questions…. but first… let me fill you in on the circumstances of where I am at now….
I tested all my electrical stuff and bottom line is the fans seem to be functioning normally… Ran the car in the driveway which has a very slight incline (not sure if thats relevant, but you’ll understand why I mention it in a minute) and it ran fine…. fans came on… no overheat condition occurred.
Took it out yesterday (I’m in NYC… 35 degree day…) seemingly no problems… drove to my sons school… which includes a good 20 min parkway drive at 55 mph…. then streets with traffic lights…. parked in the lot and waited 5 to 10 min … no overheat occurred…. so I leave to drive home and somewhere along the way I get stuck a light and I notice the temp is climbing past the half way mark (bluetooth scanner says its about 225 or so during this climb…)… once the light goes green… temp drops down without issue…. …and it will run about 218 or so…. [This then happens again at essentially every traffic light all the way home…. about 5 or 6 more times]
(…when I was stopped in the parking lot earlier it was sitting at 222 but the nieedle stayed at the half way point)
So I make it home and park on the street (also a slight incline) and open the hood…. figuring I have a couple mintues to check the fans before it overheats again…. – Under the hood I find the fans are working fine… and the car then maintains about 222 degrees and the needle stays at the half (normal location)….. Now at a loss… I close the hood, get back in and put it in drive and wait… and nothing…. no overheat occurs….
So now I am at a loss… does the fact that i am on a slight incline have any relevance?…..I dont know…. In watching the video you sent, I see there is no need for the funnell…. well when I first bled the system I did so putting the funnel in the top of the expansion tank and when it got hot enough… I came straight up and filled the funnell…. what does this mean? have I now put too much coolant in the system…
Would love to hear your thoughts and opinion on the matter… as of now…. the plan of action I have is to try again to bleed the system by simply cycling it with the cap off the expansion tank and just use a catch pan and see if it overflows…
Thanks for any advice you can give me…..
Sincerely
Matt Montalto
sorry for the delay in response (I never got notified via email of your reply)….
…my radiator does not have a port with a cap on it…. Mazda calles the cap on the reservoir the radiator cap (which is a pressure cap) and the other cap Mazda calls the coolant inlet port… this is on the engine right above the water pump and connected to the radiator top hose…..
I have tried bleeding from both ports and I still have the overheat condition…. my fans come on, but never seem to cycle off…. as I write this I have a feeling that the problem may be that the radiator fan is not cycling to its “high” speed….unfortunately the Mazda service manuel I have has such lousey info on how the system should be operating and how to actually confirm its turing up to high when its supposed to,…. thank you for getting back though… really appreciate it
Matt Montalto
my apologies for not seeing those last 2 replies… somehow I never got notified in my email…. I just happened to be coming back to give an update on this and a final resolution. I brought the car to a mechanic I know… 2 or 3 ACE certified guys… In pulling the codes and checking the symptoms, the computer software he uses was saying distributor related… swapped distributor… problem seemed to go away and then came back a couple weeks later… swapped it again… same thing…. one more time… problem remained… bottom line was that it was in fact the distributor… but the problem persisted until he used an OEM distributor…. car just wasnt able to be happy with the aftermarket ones.
Been driving the car for 3 or 4 weeks now and thankfully have not seen the problem resurface… so wanted to pass it on that the final resolution was that it had to be given an OEM replacement distributor. Thanks all for the help along the way…
Matt M
No worries Eric…. but thanks for taking the time to get back to me… appreciate it….. Figured there was no harm in throwing them out there… will continue to throw out any other ideas that might cross my mind… if any of them work, great… if not… just toss em… and you can just give me a “no” and know that there’s no offense taken… just trying to help if I can.
Stay well and keep up the great work….
Later
you know…. its funny… because I cant always get the codes because sometimes by the time I stop driving the engine light will go off….. but I managed to get it this time and the codes I pulled were P0750, P0755, P0760 and P1743. Which seems to be indicating shift solenoids a, b and c and the torque converter clutch. Also, when driving it this weekend… besides the “hold” symbol popping up on the dash it also threw the TCS and TCC light up too… but they all went away after turning the car off and on…. so that would seem to be consistent so I feel more secure that the computer itself is responding properly…. but 3 solenoids and the torque converter seems like a lot to happen at once… and the malfunction only lasts for under a minute usually and then the driving is normal……. seems like the culprit may be some sort of wiring short…. but the problem is that if inside the transmission, its a real bitch….not that I have any idea if it is or it isn’t… just happened to view a video on shift solenoids, but otherwise my knowledge in this area is quite limited
I wanted to post a follow up to this in case anyone else was looking at this problem.
I eventually brought this car to a shop. (Originally I wanted to avoid this because I did not want to have an expensive parts swapping session.)
The shop changed the distributor and replaced the egr valve and also replaced to two VRIS vacuum switches. … with all these parts being exceptionally expensive, the cost was over 1k.
After taking the car, I was pleased to see that the idle was now normal when warm …. but I was no more than 5 miles from the shop when the engine did a quick series of say 3 or 4 rpm “surges”… say about 2 or 3 hundred higher than it should be… and then returned to normal….
It did this a couple more times on the ride home…. I brought the car back to the shop and they had it for another week or so and when I picked it up that time, what they had done was removed the IAC and tried to clean and lubricate it…
No more than a mile into the ride home the problem recurred… and continues to recur periodically… sometimes throwing codes and sometimes not…..
Sometimes it throws a code and then the problem happens again and the engine light then goes off…. and other times the problem happens and it will flash or turn on the “hold” light on the dash (as if I had pressed the button on the shifter to take overdrive off)…
I have not been quick to say that this is just a back computer causing this… and I am still not totally in belief of that, but finding this issue seems to have become impossible….
And this has nothing to do with the shop guys…. it was evaluated by 2 ACE mechanics….
At this point I am practically resolved to just “living with it” as I don’t want to take it back to the shop and hear that they changed the IAC… that part is about 450 …. and who knows if that will be the final thing to solve the issue.
Unfortunately the biggest lesson I have learned in this is stay away from Mazda….
Thanks for listening
Thank you Plasmide56 for your response…. Incidentally, I have watched this video before…. any many of his others…. and I have the tool that he demo’s and did use it, but to no avail….. but changing the injector did resolve the misfire issue. So that problem is resolved… I am going to open a new topic I thing on the other issues that are happening now… however, thank you for your reply
Matt
FOLLOW UP….
So… just for anyone interested or dealing with anything similar…..
Ultimately (to make a long story short) I ended up being able to remove the fuel rails without having to take off the upper intake manifold. Once I did, I changed the injector for the #4 cylinder and the misfire code went away.
But wait …. there’s more….
So the … on the topic of the VRIS matter (P5121 and P5122)… I tested all the components of that system as shown in the shop manual and all the components tested good… and in checking all the lines to these components, I flipped over the T connecter it uses and it had a hole melted in it… so I changed that…
But wait …. there’s more…. (after all… this is a Mazda Millenia)…
So after driving the car a few miles or so, the problematic symptom came back…. where the rpm will rev and drop and rev and drop (no code though)…
…. then I pulled off the egr and the iac and throttle body and cleaned all out… then inspected the tps ….. put it all back… same problem….
I, again, pulled off the intake air assembly and tested the IAC continuity wise and it came back within spec
then I did two things at once…. (which I try never to do, but this time I did)… I disconnected the egr vacume line and closed the line to the engine with a screw… and while I was doing this, I used my odbII scanner as a scope and did a throttle sweep while watching the graph… which looked good for the most part… but say maybe one out of 10 sweeps did not look full (but this is a bluetooth scanner that I have seen some connectivity problems with before so I am not convinced that it was totally valid…
after doing this… the car seemed to drive without any issue for a little while… So I tested continuity of the egr (as described in the shop manual) and it seems to be out of spec…
so I thought I had found the problem…. but then the symptom again resurfaced… but much less frequently…. So, since I haven’t yet reconnected that egr vac line, I am inclined to think that the problem may be with the TPS….
Trying to be as certain as possible here since every part on this car seems to be 3 hundred dollars….. Trying not to spend money needlessly, but fixing is usually better that buying something else (cost wise)… as it is I just had to drop 300 this weekend replacing my Honda Odyssey’s fuel pump….
If anyone has any experience with back TPS’s I would love to hear about it… thanks
I spent a lot of time with the engine and a can of carb cleaner and sprayed everywhere I could think inside that engine and was not able to find any vacuum leaks… Looking at the long term fuel trim… I am running at just below 0 so I dont think that there is any vacuum leak at this point…. I ordered the tool and cleaner so I can run some injector cleaner through by doing it directly from the fuel rail, so hopefully that will do the trick…. if not, I will have a least a days worth of work ahead of me to go about removing the upper intake to get down to the fuel rail and injectors
Thanks…. I did do a compression check and it came back good on that cylinder…. did check all my vacuum lines and couldnt find any leaks….. as I mentioned I did have the issue with the VRIS… which is codes 1521 ans 1522 which equated to these 2 little vacuum lines on the back of the engine… and I took them off to test them and they responded correctly…. After testing them I put them back and the codes for them went away…. but after testing a few more times when checking for the misfire code, those 2 have come back… Which, to me is confusing, since I would think an airflow matter would give me a code related to a too rich or too lean mix.
If you’re interested, I followed the testing procedures for these 2 codes that are shown in a video by briansmobile1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3gb-ihNN_4)
never the less… I dont think that this could prevent this one particular cylinder from firing entirely? could it…..?.
Thank you and thank you Evil-i for your help… really appreciate it… had done some more homework since I posted that question the other night and I realize now why that piece matters so much… I wish I had looked sooner.. since I probably put that timing belt on and took it off somewhere between 5 and 10 times.
Which brings me to another question… on my final attempt… I spent an enormous amount of time lining up those marks until I was 100% satisfied that I was dead on with all 3… then I rolled the engine by hand… checked and they were still on…. rolled it again to make sure it looked good at 180 out and then again to make sure they were back to on… and they were…. I put the H.Bal’r back on and she started… now at this point… I am still under the belief that the car would not start unless all marks are perfect…. so I put it all back together… filled the radiator (this was originally a leaky water pump job)… and now when I started it, it seems to be idling fast…. granted I haven’t let it run for more that 3-5 minutes yet … but I have done some more reading and I am hearing that that may be because I have skipped a tooth….
Now… I feel I was beyond careful with my marks after all I went through on this … So my question is… does anyone have any similar experience like this where it wasn’t a skipped tooth… I know its not a vacuum hose as I don’t think I took any off… could it be something with the computer not in sync as I was trying it without the HB and then with it… so could it possible come back in line once I let the engine warm up to operating temp?
When I say idling fast, I would say its probably up at about 1200 rpm… whereas I don’t know exactly what is should be for this car, but I would thing that normal range for most is around 800.
Anyone who can shed and light or experience I would really appreciate it… thanks so much… hope all has had a great holiday season so far… thanks
Just for fun, I put in the images of the marks that I snapped out of a video I did… However… they require explanation to be clear… Its hard to tell from flat photos, so if you look at “Left_CAM” where you see the yellow dot… there is tooth directly behind it… I followed that tooth and put a mark on the top of the other side of the cam so I could line it up directly under that little arrow…
Now… regarding the right cam.. this timing mark is horribly placed… no matter how high you lift the engine its still very hard to see… but it seemed to me that as long as I had that mark lined up with the arrow… then the 2 dots and arrows seen in Right_CAM Top seemed to be lined up as well… now I know that in that image they look a little off… but that’s the problem with flat photos… if you follow the each tooth (which the belt is obviously covering)… then the same tooth that the circles are on is the same tooth that those little arrows are directly above….
(Crank mark I dont have a photo available at the moment, but that one is relatively an easy one…)
Don’t really know if I am making sense here, but I’m a detail oriented type person…. guess I cant help it…. thanks again.
Matt M
================EDIT BY POSTER JANUARY 2 2018==========================
My apologies for not amending this post sooner as the holidays have had me pressed for time…. but just wanted to update this thread, as after I posted this I did some more homework on the symptom I was speaking of and realize it’s like asking someone to find a needle in a hay stack…
Long story short is that I let the car warm up to operating temp and the idle came down to where she ought to be… which, for this care is about 650 rpms
Now I am on to trouble shooting the issue of having very low heat… which I have already researched and just need to get out there and have a look around for the cause…
In case anyone has any experience with this…. In my case the heat is coming out, but its just not all that hot…. So because of this, I am thinking that either I dont have enough coolant in the radiator, or maybe its possible that my thermostat is stuck in the open position?
… but because there is “some” heat… I am assuming that the heater core cant be totally blocked?…. any experiences anyone has to share I would greatly appreciate… thanks and happy new year to all….
Matt