Blue_Comet

So I just got my 8 bout 3 days ago and it has a check engine light so I checked the obvious things first like the fuel cap not being on tight enough but it was still present. So I scheduled an appointment with my local Mazda service center for Monday and I went to the DMV to take care of some things when I noticed every now and then when I floor it up to around 8 grand the check engine light flashes. I immediately stopped being aggressive with the throttle and drove normally home and all was fine. What I want to know is will I be ok if I drive the car normally and not like a complete **** till appointment day will I kill the engine or sumthin because right now it’s my only car. Thanks in advance

Loki

iTrader: (1)

Figure out what the check engine codes are for. Any garage can do that. Flashing CEL is always a misfire so it's either your coils, spark plugs, cat or combination of the above. Given that it only happens at high rpm I'd say cat.

Drive it as little as possible. Ideally not at all.
Did you get a compression test before purchase? Because this stuff kills engines, if the previous owner drove it like this, you'll want to be sure he didn't hurt it too much.

Blue_Comet

I’m taking it to the shop on Monday to have a bunch of stuff looked at/taken care of but if I just drive it without going to high rpms (where the misfire occurs) could I drive it for the next two days? Also the previous owner said he changed all the spark plugs, coils and gave it a tune up so I don’t know what happened. I read that if it’s low on gas it could also lead to a misfire and right now I’m almost touching E so last night I did the 20 brake presses to reset the oil pressure and today I’ll get gas to see if that was the problem.

BigCajun

iTrader: (1)

You could have healthy ignition components, but a bad cat will cause misfires.

If the previous owner neglected the ignition and had misfire issues because of it, the cat could be damaged, which can damage your engine.

The new ignition components may not be responsible for misfires, but if the cat is already damaged, back pressure will cause misfires.

Misfires kill cats, bad cats kill engines.

You can take it to a nearby auto parts store in the meantime and get the OBD scanned for free.
It may point to your misfire problem, and a P0420 'catalyst below efficiency' code is a dead giveaway your cat is bad.

Loki

iTrader: (1)

I'm not sure how else to say this. Drive as little as possible. You are risking a $6000 engine until you figure out what's going on.

Healthy cars don't misfire, regardless of fuel state.