I've been having some very strange power drops recently. Most of the time, its nothing severe enough to show up on the tac, but comes in the form of slight, yet frequent drops in power when I'm at a steady throtle, and lower RPM (1.5 to 2.5k). Like its trying to take off, though I'm at a steady throttle. Its most apparent in the first 15 minutes or so of driving. Occasionally the whole car will buck like a bronco, when I first touch the accelerator in first gear. Wildly snapping foreward and back like someone was sheaking the car, or feathering the gas pedal from the floor back to nothing quickly. At this point I let off the gas, coast, and try again to slowly get going.

What the hell could be wrong. Any ideas? Also, its gotten much more apparent the last few days, after I'd let it sit for a week while I was away on vacation. Initially when I went to start her up, electronics came on, no turn over. Same thing the second time, but the tird time it slowly rolled to start.

Could all this stuff be caused by a bad battery?
Jeeze I hope its not super technical elctric problems. Other wise its back to the shop for her.


Anyone ever seen anything like this before?

-jasonic

 

Try to charge the battery ,the ground cables could be dirty . find them all and take them off, clean them and reattach . Garfinkle runs bigger cables from the battery to the motor, motor to under carrage, from UIM to the inner fender where the abs mounts .Also tighten the pos cable to the starter, and the pos wires in the connector attached to the battery clamp. they are 10 mm nuts in the black box

 

I just had the contacts cleaned over at Rotary Power. I'm no wrench head, so anything thats done will have to be taken care of by someone I pay to do it.

Anyone know a solid electrical oriented shop here in LA that knows our cars?

-j

 

sounds like your battery is close to death. its definatly your charging system though, so dont even worry about looking any further. on my first touring 93 i installed a new alternator, battery and all 4 guage ground cables(and a few new ones) then the damn bucking problem was finally gone. its a very common problem with our cars, the grounding just isnt good enough, yet mazda looked at me like i was stupid when i described your same sympotms.

 

Very interesting... I recently purchased an R1, and it has a very similar problem to what you described. I would NEVER have thought to look into battery connections and grounding though! The previous owner did say that she replaced a number of batteries in the last few years when the car didn't get driven much.

Thanks,