Yesterday morning I startedmy engine and smoke immediately began billowing out of the exhaust. It was a blue-ish gray smoke. Mostly gray. And it didn't smell normal at all. As the car warmed up the smoke went away but it comes back slightly when the engine is revved. It also backfired a couple of times. Anybody else experience anything like this with their Mazda? What do you think is going on? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!!

 

Smoke at start up is typically valve seals going out (leaks down while the engine isn't running and builds up.) Constant smoke is an indicator of piston rings. I'd get a compression check done on all cylinders and see if any are out of line.

I also remember something about the PCV valve. I haven't had the issue, but others have that can cause some smoking.

 

From 03-05 on the V6, there was a problem with the design of the PCV valve which resulted in a good # of 6 owners having their motors replaced due to oil starvation. What is the mileage on your engine?

 

Hi. My car has about 46,500mion it right now. The smoke problem seemed to go away on its own. It lasted about 2 days, every time I started the car it would smoke. I'm thinking it might be some bad gas or something because it is still idling a little rough. I haven't filled the tank again yet so I'm going to wait and see what happens before I bring it to the dealer...

 

bluish smoke is oil...not bad gas. The rough running could be water in your gas. You could run a bottle of ethyl alcohol through your tank (dry gas, sometimes called fuel anti-freeze)

Check your oil levels regularly to make sure you're not burning up more oil than you think.

 

sstlaure & Mazmart:

Is there a TSB for this PCVissue? What's Mazda's solution for this? I'm kinda highly interested, as I have the exact same car as gerard179! Thanks,

David

 

AFAIK, there were never any TSB's or recalls issued for this problem. Has the engine been making any kocking or ticking sounds?

 

Nope, no wierd engine noises for me...so far, so good.

David

 

I have an 04 sports wagon and had this very problem around 16K miles back in 05. Took the dealer a week to figure out it was the PCV valve. They changed it out and it has only happened one time since just a few months ago with around 42K milage.
Word is that if you overfill the oil level by more than a 1/4 quart it will happen also.
Glad to be able to add pertinant info for a first post.

 

You know, I was also under the impresson that the valve issue had been resoved from '06 onward, but apparantly not. There are reports of owners of '06 models having the same problem (see this post from the Mazda6 Club). The only "soloution" seems to be insalling a second PCV valve in parallel with each other. Other than that, frequent replacement of the valve may offer some degree of protection. I guess most Mazda6 S models have not been impacted by this as there has been neither a re-call or TSB regarding this issue (either that or Mazda has found a way to avoid the issue). I have not had any problems thus far, but I make it a point to make sure that my oil level is ok and that there are no strange noises coming from the engine. All this potentiallybecause of a $12.00 part. The valve that Mazda uses is different than Ford's valve and I have not heard of any similar issues with the V6 Fusion.


**Edited to add**

I have this theorythat may help keep things in perspective. I get the feeling that the PCV valve is not prone to unusually high failure rates and it probably doesn't happen any more than it would with any other brand. Since this is not happening with an unusually high rate of freqency, there would be no re-call or TSB. However, *IF* your valve does fail, then you mayhave severe consequences up to and including engine repalcement.