Finally got my 8 back after over a month in the shop...Power steering loss
 

Ok there have been a couple of times that I have posted asking if anyone has had a sudden and total loss of power steering and some of you responded telling me you had and what was wrong.

I took my car to Northtowne Mazda here in Kansas City (this is where I bought the car) and they had it for 2 weeks. The first thing they told me was that my steering module was bad. They replaced it, still wasn't fixed. They then replaced the steering rack and they said that it was bad due to the fact that my car was lowered. Well I've had my springs for 2 years and it never caused an issue.

The new sterring rack supposedly fixed the problem, but I got less than 5 miles from the dealership and had no power steering again. Not to mention that while my car was there they damaged the hood and fender by closing it on a wrench and tried to deny it when I picked the car up. So they tossed over $3000 in parts at my car to accomplish nothing, and trashed my car along the way.

So I put up with the intermittent loss of P/S for a few months because I wasn't driving the car unless it was really nice out during the winter.

I took it to Tumminia Mazda (formerly Sunflower Mazda of Olathe KS) because Matt Rizzo the service manager was always friendly, has always shot me straight, and well they also have never damaged my car. I thought I'd give them a shot at solving the issue with the steering. After trying some of the more obvious fixes, they rolled up their sleeves and dug into it really deep working with Mazda Engineering to troubleshoot the problem a little more intelligently than Northtowne did.

They determined that there was a main wiring harness that runs from the PCM to the steering module that was coming unplugged just enought to kill the steering unit - this problem was suggested by some people on this forum. They ordered the complete harness which took almost a month to get from Mazda. They installed the harness and fixed a couple of my other gripes along with completing a recall and servicing my car. I had a rental the whole time, they fixed my car, and everything went great.

Thanks Tumminia Mazda and most of all thanks Matt Rizzo. Thanks for going the extra mile to get things done right. You have earned my business as a sales and service customer from here on.

Job well done.

Nice - glad they got to the bottom of it. A loose harness *sigh* that's never happened before in the history of cars. :rolleyes:

Did you get your hood and fender fixed?

Yeah Northowne ponied up and fixed my car. They did a shitty job on the paint work. There was rough edges around the front of the hood where the clear hadn't been sanded off correctly. They really truly do suck.

yikes, what a shitty experience with one dealer, and great experience with another. Did you tell your purchase dealer that another dealer fixed it for penny's on the dollar compared to what they spent? I'm sure their service manager would get in hot water for that!

Suggestion: Burn them in the Good Guy / Bad Guy forum. When I joined the board I scoured that thread looking for mention of the 5 dealerships closest to me and info on the dealership where I bought my car. Hopefully other new folks do the same.