Alright, before anyone tells me to go check on something that requires you to be under the hood for more than 5 minutes, I can't really do it that much. I work full time, and drive over 2 hours back and forth to work, and only have 1 day that I can use to look at my car, and I use that day relaxing to go back to work.

Now that I have that out of the way... I am wondering if these symptoms are that of a blown engine or not, I believe it may be what's going on, but I've never had an engine do this to me before, so I am not sure.

What the car is doing:
I turn the key to start the engine, in neutral, and the entire car just gives one major shudder, engine doesn't even attempt to turn over. Just has a sickly thud sound.

Video of sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GmjxKbblHY

Transmission will shift through all gears fine, so it's not dealing with that locking things up as far as I could tell... (not sure if that's even possible, I just tried to do troubleshooting on it)

This happened after:
I was driving on a fairly straight piece of road, and I hadn't hit anywhere near redline my entire drive yet, so I did a quick pull away from a light, went to shift at 6.5k or so, and then bam, the car just died, all of a sudden. The very second I put the clutch in to shift it to 2nd.

Can anyone give me an idea if this is an issue where I would need a new engine? Or point me in the right direction? Anyone else ever have this happen?

 

Check the connections on your battery, etc...

 

Loose battery terminal or very corroded one is my guess

 

Sounds like it may be a stuck starter. Might want to double check the connections, and verify the starter is functioning properly.
Are you able to turn the engine over by hand? If not the engine may have spun bearings and seized up.
I'm sure you will figure it soon out Aaron.
Good luck,
-Robert.

 

try turning the engine over by hand, meets your criteria for less than a 5 minute test to see if the engine ate a seal and is locked up.

 

The car has no loose connections as far as I can tell, and how would a loose connection actually make the car shudder?

Starter is brand new from Mazda not that long ago, shouldn't be the starter...

I thought to turn it over by hand you had to disconnect some stuff?

 

nope, leave the key off grab the belt and pull, hopefully without taking any fingers off.

 

You can also take a 19mm socket and turn the front E-shaft bolt in the middle of the main puley.

 

Yup, grabbing the belt works, its not that easy but it works. I found removing a sparkplug does make it easier.

Make sure you turn it the right way when grabbing a belt. Oh, and make sure you are in neutral ...
Happened to forget once to put it on neutral and I was wondering why it isnt turning over lol .. doh

You need to check first if the engine is moving freely, if not it might be an internal problem. If itmoves then its maybe starter or electrical related.

 

Okay... may sound like a newbie, and well... mechanically I still am, but which way do you manually turn the engine? Toward drivers side or passengers side?

 

Toward the driver's side [clockwise if you look at the front of the engine]

 

Thought so, just wanted to make sure, thanks Derek. Now to only wake up early in the morning and work on what you asked me to try last night for you. lol