alphapenguin

My CEL came on a week ago, so I finally took the 8 in for service, and they told me I have a bad O2 sensor. Long story short, it will cost me $360 parts and labor to fix. This really sucks because my warranty ran out last Oct. (I have an 04).

Here's a little horror story of my post-warranty status.

4 days after the warranty my car threw a fit, ABS stobbed working, and lost power steering. Turned out some sort of power harness was "torn up" and cost me about $500 to fix. This is after I complained that this happened right after my warranty is up, so they said mazda would pay for the part and I had to pay for the service. that's crap, but thats the way it goes I guess.

Then back in april or so, my CEL kicks on, ABS stops working, Power steering goes off line, and i lose my ASR. I have no idea whats going on so I make an appointment to get it checked. Talking to the service rep on the phone, she thought maybe it was the alternator, so I took it to autozone to get checked out. Turned out, my batter had a low charge, and but the Alternator tested as good. I am fine with this, so decide to just charge my battery or what not. The next day, i ended up losing power to everything, and my car died on the highway. Had it towed to the dealership. Turned out to be a bad alternator. That cost me another $500 in parts and labor.

So in short, after less than a year of running out of warranty I have paid around $1300+ in service issues. I was kind of upset so I went to Carmax to get an appraisal, and to top it all off, value is $10500. They said car is in great condition, just demand is down.

So in short, I am back in love with this car, cause there is no way in hell I am going to sell it for that little, no matter how little the value is. I just pray that I dont have any more "issues".

DOMINION

Dam that sucks man. Hope your dont have any more issues man. I know how it is with the stealerships.
Hang in there

bsteimel

iTrader: (5)

don't know if your a handy kind of person. but i just replaced my O2 sensor for $115. and I'm sure you could have replaced your alternator for less yourself. Wiring harness might have been a lot of work to do. but hey just the alternator and O2 sensor your talking about 500 bucks worth of savings and a couple of hours on a Saturday. The O2 sensor literally takes 5 minutes. With the DIY help on this website and the right tools you can you do almost anything yourself

alnielsen

iTrader: (4)

O2 sensor isn't covered under the Emissions Warrenty?

savedsol

Nope.

As bsteimel said, the O2 sensor simply screws in and they are under $100 if you look. All you need is a big crescent wrench.

alphapenguin

>.< This site is always helpful, but I have finally come to the conclusion I do not have enough know how to mess around with my car. I have a hard enough time trying to get stuff done around the house, i'd probably make my car inoperable. Hopefully whenever I have more time off, I can try more DIY, but they seem to take me so much longer that I hope.

Thanks for the responses though.