Newbie alert

Recently my 16 yr old son saved up his part time job money and bought himself his first car! Awesome! Except we got somebody’s headache I do believe. 2008 Mazdaspeed 3. Cool little car but we’ve had nothing but problems so far. Fed a bunch of lies about replaced parts etc etc. anyway, I’m trying to search for help so hopefully I don’t bother you guys with the same old vvt, bad turbo post. ‍♂️

 

Welcome -- what kinda problems y'all having?

 

Well it’s never performed as I believe it should. First the supposedly new spark plugs were old and had huge gaps which I’m suspecting caused the spark to blow out under boost. So new plugs fixed that. I’m still not convinced the turbo is on the up and up but we’ll have to get back to that.
Yesterday he came home and said right before he pulled in it started making a noise. I already knew some vvt stuff was going on since the timing chain was slapping the valve cover for 1-2 seconds at start up.
But now it seems the chain is flopping around behind the cover. So looks like the vvt and all that goes with it is on the menu. I’m a fairly decent shade tree mechanic but I just don’t know imports or this platform any at all. I found the how to thread on here and I’ve been going over it. We started tearing the car down yesterday but we don’t have the timing tools so I’m reluctant to keep going. I was hoping to open it up and see exactly what failed before ordering parts. Now I’m thinking I may just have to order that kit with the tool from edge. Just sucks to drop $500 on parts without having the experience with these cars to know that’s what’s needed.

 

If VVT has never been serviced it's best to replace the entire VVT and the parts that usually fail is the phaser and the locking pin inside best to replace it before you trash the engine

 

Yeah we have it all apart now. Definitely changing it all. Not something I want to do again anytime soon. I don’t know the physical symptoms of the phaser but I know I can push an inch or so of slack on top of the timing chain and the phaser moves without the cam moving. I noticed the tensioner looks like it is clicked all the way out but again I’m not familiar with these parts.

 

I’m just hoping the super slack chain is the noice I was hearing and it wasn’t something more.

 

Here's hoping, was the car modded? Any signs it's been demodded? Probably worth a compression test once you've got it back together.

 

Welcome! If the chain is slapping the cover, stop driving it. Get a full VVT kit! https://edgeautosport.com/mazda-oem...azdaspeed-3-2007-2013-mazdaspeed-6-2006-2007/

Saw a thing about fake NGK plugs on Amazon, so hopefully you did not shop there. NGK>Denso.

Cams are NOT marked. Here is the how-to: https://www.mazdaspeeds.org/index.p...eed-3-mazdaspeed-6-cx-7-vvt-the-roku-way.855/

 

Honestly I’m scared to test it. Lol not sure if it was modded or not.

 

Plugs came from local autozone, ngk. That’s the how to I mentioned above. Couldn’t afford the kit from edge, seem like a good company to deal with but I had to try my best to save my son some money so I made my own kit with the same oem parts. I did order their timing tools though.

 

Weren’t so lucky. Vvt job went together well but on start up I found that extra new noise was actually rod knock!
Only one was bad. Did some backyard polishing and gonna slap some new rod bearings in it and send it! Lol ‍♂️

 

Guess I should’ve known when I started the Vvt job and only got about a qt or so of oil out of it. Lesson for today, rod bearings need oil.