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Flyer wrote:Definately the belt. I'm surprised NightShade didn't pick up on it right away...I only called to b---- about the loss of power steering and waterpump to him only like five times when it happened to me...

You're an idiot. He didn't mention anything about the belt not being intact until NOW, so I was going based on that. You never do anything proactive on this forum, just say stupid sh*t and make fun of others.

Thanks guys, i will call auto value tomorrow and see if they got one in stock. And refer to the manuals for theinfo i need, thanks for your help.

They WILL have one in stock. Its the same belt for all K series motors....

How do i inspect the pulleys? Just try to roll them by hand?

exact same thing happened in my car,
what happened for mine was the main crank pulley seized, which caused the belt to break
so as i was driving i tried to turn with no PS and realized i was overheating...
this is also after having my belts water pump etc. replaced too
and yeah solo is right the PS pump and water pump are on the same belt
anyway, i had mazda do my repair, with a used pulley from a wrecker
worked fine till i had to scrap her for maaaaany other issues.. g/l

Edit: not sure though how youd check the pulley i imagine just try spinning it like you said..

Yeah, spin the idler pulleys, and shake them to see if they rattle. If they're fine, try the others. Hopefully, it's an idler. I've never had to mess with mine, but hopefully, you can just press a new bearing into it. That's what I did with my timing belt pulleys, and saved $$

Little update for ya....... Got paid my bonus today so i took the car to mazda to find out what's wrong. Well, they present me with an estimate of just under 1700! The root cause was a seized water pump, so they're ordering one for tuesday. However, they tried to charge me for brakes, timing belt, tensioner, etc. Timing belt and brakes done 10k km ago, i have three different types of locked nuts on the wheels so like hell they got the wheels off to inspect the calipers. I called China Tire for a quote on a water pump, 130 less than mazda for the same brand!!! I told them to only do the water pump which is coming in on monday to Crappy Tire, and the revised price for the labour is around 800. I still think that's way too much.

If you have a garage, some spare time, and some technical knowledge, you can save a few bucks doing it yourself. In the absence of any of those things though, and CT might be your best bet.

You can ask for a copy of the labour time from the manual they looked it up on. I can't remember how much time its supposed to take to change the water pump and timing belt. Oh, and if you're doing the water pump, you might as well do the timing belt. Its coming off anyway.

If you have a place over 5 degrees centigrade, do it yourself.

Its not very hard... and w/p and tbelt with all the bells and whistles should only cost you <300....

I don't have a shop available to me, otherwise i'd be all over it like an emo on a razor blade.

tehbrookzorz wrote: Oh, and if you're doing the water pump, you might as well do the timing belt. Its coming off anyway.

You don't have to remove the timing belt to swap the water pump. When you unbolt the water pump you can just slide it out from under the timing belt in the one place it overlaps. I've changed my water pump in under an hour on a few different occasions.

Yea, just swap the WP with a new one, should be around 65 for a new one. You dont need to do anything else.