DrR - Thanks and "glad" to hear I am not the only one with the surge in acceleration. Sorry to see you were the victim of sideswipe hit-and-run.

I am hoping that the engine rattle/surge is the only significant problem I will have with this car. I decided to go with a Japanese car based on general reputation. But, already, I am a getting a little suspicious of the build quality. Maybe it's a you-get-what-you-pay-for thing, regardless of where a car is built.

It could be worse. The last new-car I bought was - what a coincidence - a Beretta. Got it near-new as a dealer demo and had to pay a huge interest rate over 60 mo. because I was a poor college student at the time. What a lemon. The honeymoon with that car ended within a week as I went from my hometown in the New Mexico desert where it never rains back to my college town in Illinois -- storms along the way & a trunk leak due to sloppy workmanship soaked all of my luggage. Then there was the a Protege-like rattle (in this case, from the catalytic converter heat shield), self-destructing paint, a dashboard that contracted cancer, GM Morning Sickness with the rack&pinion, and other problems. It died a violent death in Carolina. At least the seat belts worked.

Hmmmm, after reading this board, I noticed a small 'rattle' that you guys speak of, but it's so slight that it doesn't bother me. I always let me car warm up for a minute-two minutes in the morning though

PS. The build quality is great on the Proteges!!!

the rattle on mine is when I accelerate (mostly 2000rpm +). To reduce the noise I shift at 1500.. seems to be less noisy.

As for warming up the car beforehand, I don't agree. You shouldn't warm up a car more than 30 seconds.. even there I find it's a lot!

I'm going to Mazda next week (going to US Rally this weekend).. so hopefully they have an answer for me.

just let your engine warm up before u drive it.....
when it is not warm and u rev to 2700+ then the rattle starts sounding....
once it is warm u can race the ass of out it and there is no rattle

why not?? apart from the fact that you will be using up more fuel?

engine rattle
 

If you search on rattle i beleive that you'll find a 2 threads detailing the exact problem (VCTS) and a fix (with pictures) that will not cause your engine light to turn on.

From what mazda canada has told me there is supposed to be a real fix very soon.....but what else are they going to say.

I've had my car for almost a year now and this problem and mazda's inability to fix it have made me rethink ever purchasing another mazda product.

your noise is most likely coming from your lifters. not to much they can do about that. if you do take it in. most likely they will change your oil and maybe put something back in with it. or they will take off the valve cover can and use some type of lube on them. there isnt much more they can do.

So what are you saying.. Mazda will ignore the problem and tell me to live with it? I don't think so. They will fix it, I don't care what they have to do!!

And if they don't.. well needless to say, this will be my last purchase with Mazda. Their loss!

NO NO NO, the noise is from those piece of shit VTCS plates that lower your cars emissions during cold starts. I don't know why some of them rattle, and some don't. But the ones that do rattle (like mine did) is very noitceable and very irritating. I left my solenoid plugged in, and simply unplugged the vacuum hose going into the solenoid itself. Plug the hose, and the open spot on the connector where you pulled the hose, and presto no more piece of shit rattle, and no engine light. It works great, I've been rollin around like this for about a month now. The only side effect is the throttle response is slow when its cold. Once you reach operating temp though, it runs just fine. And the slow throttle response isn't a big deal cause you really shouldn't be racing your engine if its cold anyway. I would much rather have the temp slow response than the ghetto rattle anyday.

hey sweedenhouse........

what did you plug your hoses with? i've been searching for some caps or something but don't really know where to look or what to get.

I really like my MP5, but please allow me to grumble. :mad:

Yeah, I read thru those other threads on the engine rattle. So far I concluded that ...

1) the engine rattle occurs in enough cars to be a systematic engineering and/or production defect
2) the rattle has been well-known known for many months
3) it's been the CUSTOMERS who, thru trial-and-error, have come up with the apparent causes and remedies
4) some suggested remedies seem speculative; others create new performance problems (and, darn it, I want an authoritative answer and solution that will give me the car I paid for)
5) Mazda is seemingly content to leave owners (and, maybe, their own service technicians) to spend THEIR time and money to deal with it
6) Mazda, despite having an otherwise fine product, is risking the permanent alienation of its existing customers and the loss of potential future customers by not clearly informing its customers or its dealerships of what it knows and what actions are being taken to eventually solve the problem.
7) Mazda, a company with financial and marketshare problems, can ill afford to alienate existing owners or lose future customers over the long haul Toyota, Nissan, and Honda will continue to pump out new models at a faster rate than Mazda and the Korean car makers, who can build/sell cars at less costs are quickly catching up to everyone else in quality and performance. How long can a cute kid who sez "zoom zoom" and a catchy jingle on TV offset bad word of mouth?

PS - Re the previously discussed warm-up time issue, see page 5-4 in the 2002 Owner's Manual on the how long to idle the car after starting it.

I noticed the same thing though I thought it was me since everything I bring my car to the dealer for is "normal operation"...

I read the owner's manual for letting the car idle, but I still let it warm up for about a minute in the morning. Idleing the car cannot inflict any significant wear and tear, or do anything bad to the engine, so why not let it warm up in the morning.

I used one layer of black tape over the hose (so it's not all bulky and ghetto lookin), then used some silicon and smoothed it and formed it over the tape. I only put the little bit of tape on it to prevent any silicon getting sucked down into the hose. As for the soilenoid, I used more silicon, and formed it to look nicely over the insert for where the hose goes. I mean you could just use tape if ya want, duct, or black will work. I used to really hate my ride when it made that ghetto lawn mower noise in the morning. And I don't care what you guys say about warming it up. I would let my shit idle for 3 minutes, I know this because I would sit in my car and listen to a whole System Of A Down song which all their songs average about 3 minutes, and my goddamn car would still rattle all the way out my apartment complex. But uuhh yeah know I like it better, except for the ghetto paint now. That's really the only thing that pisses me off now. Hope this fix works for ya. Like I said a month so far, so good. And if anything happens odd, I'll simply plug the hose back in, drive, or have that bitch towed to the dealer, and tell their punk asses to fix it. Hope that helps...

the cold start idle thing
 

I don't know a monkeywrench from an orangoutang, but a search on the matter confirmed what I had heard several times before from various reputable sources, including a family mechanic back home ... ie - the more you idle after a cold start, the more you prematurely wear down internal engine surfaces. There's also the matter of emissions.

See this concise explanation from an auto-mech columnist from one of the Toronto papers (third question down on that page) ...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe...ve/011702.html