Maxx Mazda

Well Andrea, you're at a crossroads. Let it continue to annoy you until the tranny blows up and have Mazda replace it, or you can have it fixed from your pocket.

Have you tried taking it to another dealer? It works!

MyZmZm

I was hoping it was related to my intake, but when I put in my AEM short ram, there was no change whatsoever.

There's a new dealer that just set up shop a few blocks away, so I think that's going to be my next plan of action. As well, I was speaking to my family's regular mechanic, and though he can't touch it right now because of warranty, he did give me the name of a guy here in town who he deals with quite often for Mazda related stuff. He's not a dealer, but he deals only with Mazda (and has been for years), so hopefully he has some ideas/suggestions and has maybe dealt with this sort of issue before.

MyZmZm

Well, hopefully something is starting to happen. I just got off the phone with Jim (service manager at the dealership where I got my car), and he wants to take my car out next weekend for a bit. He's got some highway driving he has to do, and he wants to see how bad the whine gets (really, really loud I hope!). As well, his Mazda rep is coming into town in a few weeks, and he wants me to take the rep for a ride when he's in town. I hope this will be enough to convince them that something is wrong, and do something about it under warranty!

toucci

haha they are soo gonna rack up miles on your poor car

MyZmZm

Well, I just got my car back from Jim, and he agreed that the whine was annoyingly loud. He also heard the whine at the 60/70 kph, though at this point it's still relatively quiet compared to the one at highway speed. I think he's game for trying to do something about it, but he has to wait for authorization from his rep when he comes into town, which should be about the beginning of October.

Keep your fingers crossed!

glyph_99es

how many miles did he put on it?

MyZmZm

Only about 250 km (that would be about 150miles), so that's not too bad at all. Something I can definitely live with if it means getting something done about the noise.

MyZmZm

The Mazda rep for our area was in town on Wednesday, and went for a ride in my car; thankfully the whine was loud while we were out. He didn't say much, or ask me many questions, just that he'd talk to some of the guys in QA in Toronto about it, and let me know.

Well, I got a call from Jim at the dealership yesterday and ...

I'M GETTING A NEW TRANNY!!!!!

I'm so happy!

Egg Owns

i have the same problem too...i think its from the air forced into the front grille and the air creates a whistling sound... im not sure though

UCSBgeek

Keep us up to date. Wild that you had to wait for the representative. Bureaucracy!

MyZmZm

I agree completely! However, I understand (to some extent) that Jim wasn't able to do something because technically there's nothing wrong. And even though the TSB's for the states don't apply in Canada, it's nearly identical to the one listed in the FAQ here. So therefore, he had to wait for someone with more authority to agree to foot the bill, so to speak. Something I was NOT prepared to do - I'd sell my car first, much as I love it.

Egg Owns - the sound I'm experiencing has nothing to do with wind noise, as it does not gradually appear/disappear, etc. I can control whether or not I hear the noise, and how loud/high-pitched the noise gets, simply by changing the pressure of my foot on the accelerator. That, and what speed I'm going, obviously.

glyph_99es

good to see you got the resolution you deserved. congrats!

Jeff Pritchard

Glad you got fixed! I've got a similar (I think) issue... just wrote the paragraph below for a different site so I'll post it here. Any other people still experiencing this?

I have a 2003 automatic Protege5 with 4000 kms. The engine makes a persistent, high pitched, hollow "whining" sound. It sounds metallic, but I don't know for sure. It's not brakes or an aerodynamic effect because it occurs at certain RPM levels, even when the car is not moving (if I rev the engine). Seems to happen mostly at ~1300/1500 RPM, and is very common at 50-60 km/h. Has anyone experienced this? It's driving me nuts, and my dealer's "fix" was for a completely unrelated problem: the "effect" noise of flanges at cold temperatures that has been documented in a service bulletin. That's not my problem. Any help out there? Two months owning it and I'm ready to toss it off a cliff.

J.

Omron

I replied to this issue sometime ago on this board. For models Mazda LX and ES 2001 and higher, not sure about the last proteges created.

But I can confirm for you that the issues is not really an issues an all, but just a side effect of the final drive going beyond its optimized performance range. In other words a good indicator that you are now wasting fuel is when you hear that sound. lol now of course mazda did not design it this way but this issues is a result of the on board computer and the final drive gear.

This issues does not arrises from MP3 or Mazdaspeed versions until 2003. We looked at the spects of Gear spacing/ECM chip/ Engine.

This sound is not harmful, and not annoying and if you drive a turbo designed car its similar to that hum you get. Which brings back soooooooooooooooo many memories of my ex girlfriends 911 Turbo Porsche 1995. you rip the car into some serious speed and you can hear that baby give that high Feq. pitch but it sounded like "Classcial Opera music complimenting an epic battle or something" hahahh but anyways back to this,

That sound has been there from when you started driving the car but people don't really tune in until they really just hear it one day. then we get paranoid. I know I was. But we took out a Mazda from the delership for a test drive and the sound was present.

The only thing we can conclude is that if one day you do not hear that noise and it sudden goes away, please go have your Drivetrain inspected. We already heard it stop on a fellow mazda protege friend and 3 weeks later he has a serious drivetrain failure, althought I am not sure the issues exactly.. it is wise to say that if you don't hear that sound, to get it checked out.

I can't confirm for other models such as 2000s or earlier or the Mazda SE's we just didn't have the cars availible to test it.. but from what we know. it doesn't exist in those.

If anyone else has something to had or to say...

give a shout.

MyZmZm

I should probably update you all on what ended up happening with my car.

They replaced my tranny, but it did absolutely nothing - the sound was still there, literally with no change whatsoever. I finally got fed up and traded my car in on exactly my car, but with a manual tranny. And the best part about the new one - NO WHINE!!

However there is something those of you who are still experiencing the whine may want to try. I was speaking with my friend's bf last night when they were over for supper (he's a mechanic with the Canadian army), telling him about the problems I had with my first P5. His thought was that the harmonic balancer was out of alignment, and that it had nothing to do with the transmission. In some ways, I wish I still had my original car so that he could try and test his theory.