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About 5 months ago I bought a 94 mx-3, it's a v6 5 speed. It ran perect untill about a month ago when the cat. converter went out. I had this problem fixed but when I got the car back it had some new issues. For one it doesn't like to start unless you crank on it for a while the next problem is that after it actually does start it has almost no power in the lower rpms of 1st and 2nd gear and will try to die if you give it too much gas, I recently replaced the battery and spark plugs which helped a little with starting but not the power loss, any ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I had almost exactly the same problem last year with mine, took it into mazda and the went through everything (TPS, CPU ect). When i took it in I said I thought it was the distrutor/Coil, thats what it was in the end.

I had taken the car into the local garage (not mazda dealer) for compression test, when i got the car back, same probs as you. They had left ignition key in on position with motor not running, never do that. Fries your coil (which is in distributor assembly).

I m on my 3rd distrubutor, they are very expensive here. I would suggest you try buy forums, i ve seen for $50.00 there lately.

Also i could be wrong. If you dont have a 96 model car with OBD II system, its also hard to detect problem from CPU.(Even with dealer OBD I scanner).

I d try distributor 1st, its always good to have a spare & easy to change

Good luck

Thanks I'll definately try that 1st, also I forgot to add that before the cat. went bad it idled at around 800-1000 rpm, now it idles around 1500-2000.

no, first and foremost you should take a look at the black accordion intake hose and check for cracks... infamous problem on our cars.. my very first problem back in the day

mx3ailiax wrote:Thanks I'll definately try that 1st, also I forgot to add that before the cat. went bad it idled at around 800-1000 rpm, now it idles around 1500-2000.

yea a bad cat can give you bad idles I had the same issue with my 240sx it idling high could be as the other guy said your distributor, cause normally wanna idle right below 1k, as to the other guys problems I've never heard about the intake hose guess I should look at mine too!

I agree with NinjaJim, its always a good idea to properly inspect the air intake (accordian) hose. I also wanted to mentioned that a blocked catalytic can result in power loss, it does happen on occasion. If you installed a junk yard cat its a remote possibility. good luck

The cat. that came on the car got plugged, but when I had it replaced I had a brand new one put on so there shouldn't still be a problem with that though at this point I'm not ruling anything out.

In that case I still say distributor.

Ok finally an update on my problem (didn't get to go anywhere with it due to being busy with school and work) I had a mechanic friend of mine check it out and he said he thought it was the fuel filter, so we replaced it and though the old one was nasty it didn't help much. He then figured out how to diagnose it and it threw out a code 16 (egr) but according to him the valve opens and closes fine and is doing what it should, so now I'm wondering if one of the other problems you guys talked about, possibly a crack in that hose would cause this code to appear?

check vacuum leaks and do and your injectors, when the car is idling do an idle drop test, pull one plug wire at a time and see if the idle drops the same amount, could be a bad intake gasket, you need to get a vac gauge and hook it up and check your reading

Ok I did the idle drop test and every wire caused the idle to go down the same amount, I put some injector cleaner in my gas and ran the car around for a bit, when I parked it again though the my rpm's stuck at 2500, I restarted the car and now the idle keeps bouncing from 1000 to 1500

seems like a tps/iac problem. Why are you troubleshooting injectors. Im 90% certain you got a bad IAC on your hands.

Adjust the tps the right way , that usually fixes my iac problems.