Starter replacement for series 2.
 

I’m at 81,000 miles. I plan on swapping out my starter, as it’s starting slower recently. Did you guys go with OEM? Because I saw on realmazdaparts it’s listed at $340! There’s several listed on Amazon that appear to be oem, and they’re all listed at around $100. Are they knockoffs being that cheap? Or is realmazdaparts just way overpriced? Also is the process for swapping it out the same as series 1?

Go to RockAuto or another car parts site. Amazon is probably fine too, but hard to guarantee. In some cases the stuff you buy online are just reconditioned OEM ones.
No sense buying a brand new Mazda one.

Before you throw parts at the problem, have you had your battery load tested yet?

I didn’t. But I decided to swap out my battery anyway yesterday since it was going on 5 years. Hoping that would fix the problem. But the new battery didn’t fix it.

I’m going insane. So I was working on taking off the old starter today and ran into trouble with the upper 14mm bolt/nut holding the top of the starter on. How did you guys get it off? It’s so unbelievably cramped that I can’t get any leverage or get my socket on it good. An extension too long runs into the heat shield looking thing to the left, making me unable to get the socket on the nut. An extension that’s too short gives me no room to move the wrench. :wallbash:

Finally got it off. If anyone else runs into this, try hammering a 13mm socket onto the rounded nut and get it off that way.