My 2012 99000 miles cx9 had to have the ball joints replaced again after the recall in 2015 for lower control arms and ball joints. The boots were ripped and the driver side ball joint was actually loose.
Is there any chance that Mazda will reimburse me for the cost of replacing these ball joints, again? I'm going to call early next week and ask them about it.

thanks

chuck
reading, pa

 

Seriously? In a 13 year old vehicle? Not a chance in he77 I'd say! NO auto manufacturer would. Eventually, the Owner has to pay for their own vehicle maintenance.

 

True enough in what you say. I’ve owned about 10 vehicles in my life so far. Ford explorer. 245000. 2 rav 4. 200000+ total combined. Chevy Vega (first car). 144000. Plus others. So I know all about maintenance. This is the first vehicle I’ve ever owned where I’ve had to replace ball joints. So, the recall replacement parts have a lot to be desired. It was only 57000 since I had the original ball joints replaced in 2015. Under recall. They should reimburse me for bad parts but of course they won’t. I’ll enjoy arguing with customer service. One correction. This is the first vehicle where the ball joint boots ripped. This allowing dirt and water to cause deterioration to the ball joint.

 

Yep. I hear you.......most vehicle manufacturers have issues with inferior parts these days. I'm sure that a lot of these vehicle parts are made by a sub-contractor for the vehicle manufacturers.

Speaking of suspension parts......I used to own a 2018 Ford Escape with the 1.5L Ecoboost engine. After I bought it (new) I started seeing how the 1.5L Ecoboost engines are having coolant loss issues.......started reading about these engines. Turns out that under boost, the cylinders can "move" at the top of them and starts to wear on the cylinder head gasket. Eventually it will leak coolant into the cylinder(s), and of course, owners never open their hoods to check coolants, and they overheat the engine when there is enough coolant loss.

Once I verified that my Escape was losing coolant, I traded it in on another vehicle. BUT......before I did.....the front end was making a noise (started at about 12,000 miles on the clock) and I finally traced it down to a dry tie rod end on the driver's side. The tie rod end had very little grease in it......and it wasn't leaking any either.....the original tie rod end has no Zerk fitting. It was just a bad Ford part! I replaced it at about 21,000 miles, with a Moog TR end that had a Zerk fitting. The Escape had 31,000 miles on it when I traded it in right before Christmas 2023. A shame, my wife really liked the car!

Unfortunately, there are going to be products that have issues.......including an expensive automobile!

 

I just got off phone with Mazda. They said since I didn’t go to a dealer for the ball joint replacement they couldn’t ‘help’ me with any kind of reimbursement, whole no or in part. So lesson learned is go back to dealer for 2nd repair of an originally recalled part.

 

Well aside from the obvious reason why a replacement part can't be perpetuated past 10 years or the basic warranty and the only exception is a safety deemed recall which in historically rare after the time period.

If anyone chooses to use other then the dealership of the make for any and all warranty replacement parts and actually many other services an auto manufacture can and has the right to deny any WARRANTY claims and or other adjustments.
The only exception is if you in advance because of your location are somewhat isolated to get dealership service done. And then you had better get preapproval and keep accurate records.