MX-3.com

Hey fellas, I'm new here, and new to the MX-3 scene.

Here's the story so far. On a local classifieds site i found a 1995 Mazda MX-3 Precidia GS V6. Gorgeous car, black, fully equipped w/ everything electric except seats and its a manual. Thank god, i've had to drive my girlfriends automatic Malibu for way to long. My left leg is lookin like a stick now .

Anyway, nice car, but it has issues w/ engine. I bought the car under the pretense that it didn't run. This is fine, as eventual KLZEism is necessary anyway. The person I bought it from said that their mechanic claimed it had flooding issues. After a couple minutes of tweaking, and a new set of spark plugs, we got it to fire up and run (more so than the previous mechanic could) and even started driving it around the yard.

The tweaking consisted of adjusting the distributer either retard or advance, I can't wrap my head around which way is which at the moment. So, so far so good, except I can't advance/retard it anymore. So we replaced the timing belt. Same issue. Timing is spot on, except the previous owners seemed to have put the LH cam pully on backwards. The main issue though is that when you REV the engine slowly, it revs fine. If you rev it quickly it chokes/backfires/dies etc.

Am i correct in assuming this is a distributor issue? I've heard that these things have a had a rough time w/ distributors, and the one on the car is its 2nd at least.

New, INTELLIGENT members are always welcomed (You seem to have both of those covered).

I don't have much to offer here other than check for the all too common intake hose vacuum leak. Often times the leak won't show up until you gun the engine and the torquing of the engine in its mounts causes a harmless crack to become a gaping vacuum leak.

Also, when you adjust the position of the distributor to adjust your timing, the car needs to be put into diagnostic mode by jumping TEN (Test Engine) and Ground in the diagnostic connector.

If the LH cam sprocket is put on backwards, then the timing mark must be in the wrong place, no? Or did you fix it?

You my friend have the famous ignitor failure symptoms. My mx3 was doing the SAME THING, also if the cam gear was backwards it wouldnt even idle. search for hei mod.

After a little more running it appears theres also a leak in the very front of the motor, the cylinder head cover is leaking down the front of the motor. They cleaned it up before i bought it. Could that be causing vacuum issues?

Unlikely, but you should fix it anyway, because it'll just keep leaking oil.