Hi there. I'm new to the forum and also recently baught my first Mazda 3. Its a 2008. I'm concerned about a couple things I notice.

When I first drive it in the AM (car sat overnight/is at its coolest I suppose), I hear what I can best describe as a slurping sound that seems to come from under the front passenger side. Its not a rattle, but is sort of rough sounding. One Am recently I almost thought the thing was starting to sound like a high end lawn mower.

This sound seems to go away as I drive the car and is hard to discern later in the day. It occurs as I am slowly pulling out of my parking space/when feeding gas, and when feeding gas for a while after.

Another thing (related?) is that I feel like it takes an extra few seconds to turn over sometimes - enough to notice it.

I also feel like the car has been more slugginsh lately, but it has been ungoddly hot and humid here, and I've fun the AC quite a bit (and at hight speeds, and I drive fast).

Any ideas? I'm losing sleep over this. I even had a nightmare about it.

Thanks so much.

 

what you describe is somewhat not normal for a good running car, its nothing serious atm but here are a couple of things you should look into.

1. Have your charging system tested, see if you have drains or your battery is about to bite the dust, if its a stock panasonic battery then get ready to replace soon.

2. Noise on cold starts is probably the lash adjusters making noise, even though that sound is normal (for mazdas) be sure to properly check your oil.

3. Lose of power may have to do with a couple of things, check your air filter, plugs, oil color and change as needed, switch to full or part synthetic oil and run some lucas fuel system cleaner. Thats about all you can do.

4. Running the a/c draws a considerable amount of what little power there is from the motor. If you mash the gas hard enough the a/c kicks off (as in every car).

 

Thanks for the tips. I'm going to take her in a d leave her overnight so they can start her up first thing in the morning and hear whats going on.

What does the Lucas do, or how does it do it?

Thanks again.

 

Save your money, Lucas fuel system cleaner will not provide any benefit; your precieved loss of power is due to the Air Conditioning. If you want to prove this, simply turn the A/C off at night sometime and drive it around.