Hello everyone,
In need of HELP!


I have a 2004 Mazda 3, had it for almost 5 years now and haven't had a major issue with it thus far. Until this week. Driving it to work yesterday morning and went to make a left off a hwy ramp and when I turned the wheel, my power steering cut out for a few seconds and came back. As I drove a few more feet, when I hit my brakes, the abs light and ebrake light flashed, my radio went out and I lost steering, only for a split second then it came right back on. As I continued to drive, it continued to happen. Drove to my mechanic, parked it and shut it off. Left it there and went to work. All day the mechanics took it out to try and duplicate the problem and couldn't. So they cleaned up all the wiring reconnected it all and charged me 200.00.


This morning on my way to work, about 2 min from my house, it happened again...and then again...and then again...and then the entire car just stopped working. I restarted it and drove it directly to the mechanic, took him for a drive and couldn't get it to duplicate....I am a mom who drives with a child in the car and I am terrified to drive it for fear this happens when I'm in the middle of an intersection. I called Mazda and they said it could be a junction box problem, however, they want 1000.00 to fix it. 350.00 just to hook it up for a diagnostic. Has anyone else had this issue? Any help would be appreciated.

 

Have your mechanic do a wiggle test with the car running and the radio blaring. If he does not know what a wiggle test is then go elsewhere. Sounds like the electrical portion of the ignition switch to me but could be a problem in the underhood fuse/relay box. Not really a hard problem to find given the circuits involved that you described.

 

My mechanic pulled some strings at mazda and had a mechanic there scan it, during the scan they found a bulletin that required a reflash of the pcm that had never been done. So they did that (under a recall, thankfully) They looked under the hood and the report says everything looks fine. Guess I'll soon find out if that fixed the problem.

 

TSB # 01-003/08 I had seen but it does not address the fact that the radio quit. The PCM has nothing to do with the radio so while i'm glad they flashed your PCM with the newest program i have my doubts that there is nothing else wrong. I hope that takes care of it for you though.

 

Anyone have a bit more information on this PCM flash? What exactly it's meant to solve?