my 2014 CX5 has been holding back have been to Mazda dealer who could nit find anything wrong. They have now taken the engine apart and found that there is metal in the oil and that the Camshaft is breaking up. They quoted 5000 euros to repair but have now said they willl not guarantee the repair as they say that metal could have travelled further and coud be in the engine. They are now saying they want 12000 euros for a new engine!! we feel they are making too much of this, if we put a new camshaft and followers and change oild and all filters will it sort the problem or are Mazda right and we need to replace the engine. Its very expensive to carry out the initial repair dont want to spend 5000 if we still have a problem. Any help woud e appreciated.

 

If there are metal shavings in the oil then that is a big issue. The shavings will literally destroy all of your bearing surfaces, moving parts and can clog your oil pump filter. The only three alternatives I can think of are to do a complete tear down and engine rebuild, put in a used engine or trade it in for another car. In the meantime, I would not start or run it although the damage has probably been done. Good luck.

 

Hi
Thank you for your response, this is basically what the Mazda dealer has said.

 

The informatio0n is interesting .... I wonder did they happen to take pictures of the camshaft? I would be very curios if you could provide the exact service write up from the Mazda service department on your thread? There is some information that is not exactly accurate knowing the composition of the Mazda camshaft billets used.
Also, what exactly are they suggesting the metal is in the oil, where did they find it and what was the size of the metal they found as well the color? Did they actually check to see if the material was actual metal and run a magnet in a sample? I mean really there is much more to the story that you are not telling, or they are not telling you. So I would need to read the service write up!
Sorry but my first though reading about the cam is BS.

 

Good point. If the shavings are a brass color that is your bearing surfaces. If it's a regular silver metal cover then it could be a camshaft or other metal parts of the engine. Easiest way to tell would be to drain the oil through a coffee filter and see what you get. Also, you can cut open the oil filter and see what's in there.

The plastic valve guides on my son's old E36 BMW went out years ago and it took out a camshaft as well as got into the rod bearings. We ended up taking the engine down to the block and replaced too many parts to get it up and going again. The metal shavings were like cancer and go into everything.

 

The camshaft is a billet so its not likely that anyone that is not trained or educated in that material could know if they did see metal flakes to ID it as the camshaft. Also bearing have more than one type of metal so again unless you are an engine machinist it would be hard to ID. Now copper at least you would know that's not good. But there is more than engine bearing that use copper.
Basically, the only way is to look at the parts and that includes engine bearings otherwise it a crap shoot of guessing.
Most engines new like Mazda for an example will have all the mentioned material in the oil and oil filter during normal break in. And if regular oil and filter serving is not done the low to no windage in the oil pan can collect material like metal particles for a long time and at any time they could be reintroduced into the oil and have you thought that something is wrong.

Nothing posted yet indicates a problem only a minor observation. I am very doubtful it is the camshaft.
Just another FYI the Mazda Skyactiv camshaft I was surprised to see that they used quality billets. I was prepared when I started my own personal camshaft project to get several used Skyactiv camshaft top "roll up" for all the engineering numbers. Basically it would more or less if damaged would have been from something other than the camshaft itself coming apart. Based on the hardness measured reading it would be something equal or greater than the camshaft itself and that lease parts that if they did cause camshaft damage they would have been as damaged or likely more damaged than the camshaft itself and there would be large pieces of metal not flakes.

 

I am going to assume you have the 2.2 diesel engine ? (SH)

This was a common problem in the early 2.2 SH diesel motor.