Hello everyone, I'm Wang Ziren, editor of Radish Report In September last year, I bought a 2007 Mazda6 in Shanghai, and I recorded in detail the journey of buying a car at that time"I spent more than 10,000 yuan to buy a Mazda 6! 》。At that time, I found that there were many problems with this car, but due to the limited time during the National Day holiday, I had to hand over the maintenance of the Ma 6 to my family. At the end of last year, the preparation of the Ma 6 was almost finished, so I drove the prepared Ma 6 as I wished during the Spring Festival holiday. Today, let's talk about the maintenance process and cost of this old horse 6, as well as the use of this 16-year-old old car after maintenance.
During the last maintenance, my Ma 6 found a total of 8 problems in the 4S shop, which were oil leakage from the valve chamber cover, collapse of the right foot of the engine, oil leakage from the oil radiator, oil leakage from the steering system, damage to the ball cage in the right half shaft, oil leakage from the rear shock absorber, damage to the reversing radar module, and damage to the rightmost radar. 
Subsequently, the 4S shop also gave me a maintenance order, and the preliminary estimate of the maintenance cost was 6048 yuan. Since these accessories need to be ordered, plus the need to use a car during the National Day holiday, I did not send the Ma 6 to the 4S shop for maintenance, but waited for the National Day holiday to end, let the family find a familiar repair shop to repair and maintain, and the parts required for maintenance were purchased online by myself. 
When you hear about online shopping for accessories, you may think that this matter is not very reliable, after all, there are many fakes purchased online. But what I want to say is that the situation of the Ma 6 is different from other cars, because as early as 2003, Mazda gave FAW Car the product platform of the Ma 6, so FAW Car can justifiably launch other models on the platform of the Ma 6, so there is the Besturn B70. Because of this, B70 and Ma 6 are common in many accessories, plus the number of these two cars exceeds 1 million, so the accessories are so cheap that there is no sense of counterfeiting at all. 
Take the machine feet as an example,Ma 6 has a total of left、Right、There are three rear feet,If you choose the accessories of the Pentium B70,Then the three feet of the ** are yuan。 Because the last time I checked in the 4S shop, I found that the right foot of the Ma 6 was completely damaged, and there was a slight crack in the rear foot, so I did not hesitate to spend 150 yuan to buy the right and rear feet. Judging from the label information on the online shopping accessories, these two feet should be produced by FAW Car entrusted by Tuopu Group, which belong to the genuine parts. 
However, when replacing the foot at the repair shop, the family's advice is to replace only the right foot that has been completely damaged, and there is no need to replace the rear foot with a slight crack. In fact, after replacing the right foot, the previous resonance and squeak problems of the Ma6 disappeared. It's just that when idling, the steering wheel and seats occasionally have some slight shaking, and the engine runs very smoothly and quietly under other working conditions. If the left and rear feet are also replaced, I believe that the running quality of this car will be even better! 
In addition to the feet, the original reversing radar module of the horse 6 purchased online is only 148 yuan, and the reversing radar on the far right is only 48 yuan. After replacing these two accessories,When the R gear is hung up, the stereo of the horse 6 finally emits a "di" beep,The reversing radar function of the original car returned to normal。 
The most worrying problem of cracking the dust jacket of the half-shaft inner cage, I searched the Internet for a long time and did not find the original or genuine inner cage repair kit. As a last resort, I had to find a more famous ** and spent 90 yuan to buy about two auxiliary cage repair kits. It should be noted here that the inner cage of the horse 6 is divided into two types: triangular and hexagonal, and it is best to take a picture of the original car cage ** to the seller to confirm when buying a repair kit, like my horse 6 is a hexagonal cage. 
When replacing the inner cage dust jacket, the front suspension must be disassembled first, and then the grease should be re-applied, and the whole process is quite troublesome, so I will not introduce them one by one here. In short, after replacing the left and right inner cage boots, I no longer have to worry about scrapping the half shaft. 
As for the oil leakage of the valve cover, oil radiator, steering power and rear shock absorber, I choose to wait and see for the time being, because oil leakage and oil leakage are two different things after all, as long as the oil and steering oil are replenished in time, there will be no problem.
The original spark plug of the horse 6 is replaced every 100,000 kilometers, but the last time the spark plug was replaced by this car was 10 years ago, and the car was adjusted again, so I spent 91 yuan on the Internet to buy four spark plugs. However, when replacing the spark plug, the horse 6 found a new fault, although the outside of its valve chamber cover is only leaking oil, but the inside of the spark plug has begun to leak a lot of oil, so after removing the high-pressure bag, the spark plug is full of oil, it seems that this must be repaired.
The best way to deal with the oil leakage of the valve chamber cover is to replace it with a new valve chamber cover, and the original parts of B70 on the Internet are **245 yuan, which is not particularly expensive. But replacing the valve cover gasket alone can also solve the problem, so I chose the cheaper plan and bought the valve cover gasket of the B70 for 25 yuan. After replacing the new gasket, there was no sign of oil leakage on the Ma6 valve cover.
The failure of the window switch found from the day of buying the car, after the inspection of the repair factory, ruled out the possibility of the failure of the window control module, and the real reason for the failure of the window is actually because the horse 6 did not re-match the software after disconnecting the battery. Therefore, after re-matching with the diagnostic equipment, the four window buttons of the Ma6 can be used normally. In addition, when I was powering the dash cam, I found that the cigarette lighter interface of the Ma 6 was rusty, so I spent another 21 yuan to buy new accessories. In total, Ma 6's current maintenance material cost is 513 yuan, because the family is very familiar with the repair shop, so no working hours are confiscated. If you take the 839 yuan spent on replacing the oil, transmission oil, and brake fluid in the 4S shop, and 200 yuan for the four-wheel alignment, then the maintenance and maintenance cost of the horse 6 is a total of 1552 yuan.
When I first bought the Ma6, I checked the maintenance records of this car, and the system at that time indicated that there was a recall of this car, but I didn't look too carefully to check all the recall information. It wasn't until one day that I entered the VIN code of the vehicle on the "Car Recall Network" to check it, and I found out that the 05-13 Ma6 had recalled the airbags in 2016-2017. Since it has been 6 years since the last recall, and Yima has long been merged with Changma, I can only contact Changan Mazda 4S store, but the 4S store doesn't seem to know whether it will work or not, so the 4S store has to send an email to the manufacturer first.
The efficiency of email communication can be imagined, so after 4 days, the 4S store replied that the airbag could be exchanged, and waited for a few days before the accessories were sent to the 4S store. At first, I thought it was just to replace the main airbag, but in fact, the inflators of the main and passenger airbags of the Ma6 had to be replaced. And judging from the information on the packaging of the accessories, the new gas generator is still made in Japan. After replacing the new inflator for free, the 4S shop also washed the car according to the normal service process, and there is one thing to say, Mazda's after-sales service is not bad.
After replacing the new airbag, the maintenance and maintenance of the Ma6 has finally come to an end. However, in the next use, I found that the horse 6 still has some problems, such as when driving on uneven roads, I don't know whether the body or chassis makes a relatively small "clucking" sound. But on asphalt roads, the chassis of the Ma6 sounds neater again. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, I'm obviously more tolerant of squeaks than before, and if I'm a few years younger, I'll probably try to solve them. In addition, the glass regulator on the left side of the horse 6 window is a little stuck, the window lifting is not smooth, and even sometimes you need to pinch the glass by hand to lift it up to close normally, and you have to maintain the window regulator in the future.
At first, the coolant level of the Ma 6 was below the normal scale of the reservoir, but after a few days, the coolant in the reservoir was all gone. Normally, the coolant shouldn't drain so quickly, but when idling, I didn't see a leak.
If the coolant does leak, then the engine must be too hot and will need to be overhauled. What's more troublesome is that the horse 6 does not have a water temperature alarm function, so you need to pay attention to the water temperature meter on the far left side of the dashboard when driving the old horse 6. If the water thermometer hand keeps deviating from the middle scale, it means that there is a problem with the cooling system, so don't hesitate to fix it immediately.
Out of prudence, I spent another 45 yuan to buy a barrel of 4L coolant, added the coolant to the normal level, and after running a distance, I didn't notice a decrease in coolant for the time being, hoping it was just a false alarm. In order not to drop the chain on the way, I have prepared engine oil, transmission oil, and coolant in the trunk, which is also the most basic respect for the old car!
Compared with the maintenance process of the Ma 6, what I want to talk to you about is its driving experience. When I told my friends and relatives about the purchase of Horse 6, their first reaction was "the king of the curve". I couldn't help but be stunned when I heard this title, and thought: How famous was the propaganda of this car back then?
However, when I drove the Ma 6 on the highway, the urban ring road, and the mountain road for a period of time, I found that the old Ma 6 was really good in handling. For example, when driving at 60-80 km h on the city ring road, I was curious to try the steering of the horse 6, and even if I only moved the steering wheel slightly, the body would respond immediately, which is quite good today, let alone 21 years ago in the ...... of 2003
In fact, the Ma6 was developed with a strong focus on handling stability, and its development team compared the Ma6 to its competitors in the same class at its in-house proving ground. As shown in the picture above, when the vehicle turns the steering wheel at a speed of 100 km/h, the Ma6 (also known as the Japanese Atenza) is of the Ma6Steering wheel operating angle, steering wheel operating force, yaw angle of the bodyThe time difference between these three curves is very small, which means that the body responds to the rhythm when the driver turns the steering wheel, and the driver also gets good feedback from the steering wheel. In contrast, the gap between the EC Competitor and the Ma 6 in that era is more obvious, and there is a large time difference between the three parameters. So how did the Ma6's excellent handling ability come about? Specifically, Mazda applied a number of new test methods during the development of the Ma6 and found that body deformation had a great impact on handling stability, and Mazda also conducted a thorough survey of competing products in the same period, and came to the same conclusion as before, that is, cars with good handling have good body rigidity. But the rigidity of the body can be divided into the whole or the part, where does the rigidity of the body have the greatest impact on the handling?
Through new equipment and methods, Mazda has identified eight parts of the body that are closely related to handling and strengthened them one by one. To give two examples, the front dash of the Ma 6 has an additional 4 cross members, which are connected to the left and right body, the front pillar, and the full-frame subframe, so the local rigidity of the front dash is very good. At the same time, the rack and pinion steering of the Ma 6 also adopts a more rigid fixing method, and the swingarm of the front suspension is also a high-rigidity structure. As a result, when the driver turns the steering wheel of the Ma6, the front suspension deforms very little and the front of the car is able to drive in the direction expected by the driver.
Immediately afterwards, between the rear seats and the trunk, the Ma 6 has also been optimized, and the cross members on the coat rack and the chassis cross members and the sides of the body are a closed structure, so the deformation of the rear suspension will also be reduced when steering, and the handling stability of the whole car is better. Thanks to the high-rigidity design, the body deformation of the Mazda 6 was only one-half to one-tenth of the previous Mazda model, which was the most rigid car in the entire Mazda brand at that time, and it was also at the leading level in its class. Nowadays, these designs are also applied to sedans such as the Ankesaila, and it can be said that the Mazda 6 has accumulated a lot of development experience.
It should be emphasised here that the optimisation of the rear of the body is limited to the sedan version, while the rear of the 5-door hatchback coupe and the station wagon do not have these enhancements due to the larger trunk opening. In other words, the most sporty version of the Ma6 is the sedan version, which is why the high-performance version of the Ma6 MPS model is based on the sedan.
Although the Ma 6 was an out-and-out sports sedan back then, in addition to the sport, the comfort of the Ma 6 was actually good. This is mainly because the Ma 6 adopts a front double wishbone suspension structure, when it comes to double wishbones, everyone knows that it is higher than today's mainstream front MacPherson suspension, but where is the specific performance? From a comfort point of view, the double wishbone suspension has better straight-line stability. How do you understand this? As a simple example, if a car is driving on a straight road, the driver can theoretically keep the car in the middle of the lane by holding the steering wheel steady, but in reality, the driver always has to make subtle corrections to the steering wheel in order to keep the car straight. The main reason for this phenomenon is that the road surface is not completely flat, and even the slightest unevenness can interfere with the suspension, tires, and cause the vehicle to steer automatically.
The advantage of the double wishbone is that it has better resistance to road interference than MacPherson. For example, when my previous sedan with MacPherson front overhang was driving on a potholed straight road, not only did the steering wheel feel very direct, but it also had to correct the direction quickly. But when driving the horse 6, it is not so uncomfortable, the strength of the steering wheel beater is very small, and only the direction is corrected slightly, and the driving feels calm and comfortable.
In addition, the suspension of the Ma 6 is not stupid and hard, in the face of small bumps and seams on the road, the suspension can filter the vibration and noise relatively gently, and the daily driving is very pleasant. When encountering a larger bulge, because the front shock absorber of the horse 6 is integrated with the rebound buffer spring, so when the shock absorber is compressed to a certain stroke, the rebound buffer spring will play a role in supporting the body, and the suspension feedback will also become significantly stiffer, so the suspension of the horse 6 can provide good support when changing lanes quickly.
In terms of power, the Ma6 is equipped with an MZR L-series four-cylinder engine, and this series is divided into 18l、2.0l、2.3L three displacements, of which the introduction of domestic is 20l and 23L two powertrains. Since Ford was the majority shareholder of Mazda at the time, and Mazda had strong engine development capabilities, the newly developed L-series engine was actually the core four-cylinder power of the entire Ford Group. As a result, the L series engine was designed for the global market when it was established, so it adopted a lot of cutting-edge technologies at the time.
Take my 2 of the 6 of this horseAs far as the 0L self-priming engine is concerned, although it only has 146 horsepower and 183 Nm, it does not seem outstanding today, but its intake system design is ahead of its time. Hardware-wise, it comes with S-VT variable intake timing, VIS variable intake tract, VTCS intake tumble control, VAD variable air duct. The two technologies, S-VT and VIS, are mainly to improve power performance, and they are now basically popular, so I won't go into too much detail here.
As for the relatively rare VTCS intake tumble flow control and VAD variable air duct, it is worth talking about. Specifically, the VTCS system is to install a valve plate at the bottom of the intake manifold, when this valve plate is closed, the effective cross-section entering the cylinder through the intake manifold is reduced, so the flow rate of the air increases, and a large tumble flow is formed in the cylinder, and the tumble flow is a huge help for oil and gas mixing, combustion. As long as the engine speed is lower than 3750 rpm on the Ma 6, the valve plate of the VTCS system will be closed, and even if the engine intake is not large enough, the air can generate a strong tumbling flow in the cylinder.
The VAD variable air duct is designed with two main and auxiliary ducts in the air filter box, and the air passes through the main channel with small diameter and noise reduction function at low speed; At high revs, the main and auxiliary ducts work at the same time, and the engine intake resistance is smaller, which does not reduce the output power. Thanks to a range of noise-canceling technologies, this 2.The noise of the 0L engine is actually very small, I remember the first time I drove the 6 to rest in the high-speed service area, I stood next to the front of the car, and I didn't notice that the engine was idling for a while.
It is worth mentioning that all of the above techniques are also applied to the 23L engine. The difference is that 2On this basis, the 3L engine also adds [full-range detonation management system] and [double balance shaft], so in terms of power release and jitter control, 2The 3L engine is better than the 2The 0L engine is even better. It is precisely because of 20l、2.The 3L engine design was ahead of its time, so the Ford Mondeo, Focus, and Volvo S40 and S80 models of the same period were equipped with the MZR L series engine.
In the gearbox part, the Ma 6's 5AT gearbox shifting logic does not find any problems, it can quickly understand the driving intention and make the correct shift operation. In terms of smoothness, except for a slight fluctuation in the acceleration of the whole vehicle when the first gear rises to the second gear when accelerating slowly, the shift action of the horse 6 under other working conditions is almost imperceptible.
And after a period of contact, I found the transmission shift strategy of the Ma 6 to be particularly interesting, such as when releasing the accelerator at the intersection of the red light in front of me to slow down and coast, the transmission will gradually drop to 1st gear as the speed of the car decreases. The Ma 6 is different, its torque converter sliding range is very large, as long as the road slope is small, and do not step on the brakes, even if it has been slid to the engine in the idle stage, the gearbox has been hanging 3 gears, and relying on the engine idling this strength, the Ma 6 can maintain a speed close to 20km h. At this point, I just need to brake a little, and the gearbox will quietly drop from 3rd to 1st gear. Compared with the current new car, the frequency of shifting of the Ma 6 is indeed much lower.
In addition, the throttle tuning of the Ma6 also retains some of the style of old Japanese cars, and when I start to accelerate, I only need to tap the throttle to have enough driving power, and the power delivery is very linear. When cruising at 80 km/h on the ring road, the Ma6 only needs to press one-fifth of the throttle to maintain speed, giving the illusion that it is driving a large-displacement car.
Accelerating and overtaking in the city, the 5AT transmission downshifts very decisively, and the power response of the self-priming engine is also very fast. It's just that, 2The acceleration created by the 0L self-aspirated engine is not strong, and my temperament is not in a hurry, so the power of the Ma6 is enough for me.
Horse 6 20L engine power characteristics
Different from ordinary cars, the acceleration feeling of the Ma 6 at high speed will be improved to a certain extent, which is first of all because the cruising speed of the Ma 6 is higher, such as when the speed reaches 120km h, the speed is around 4000rpm, which is just at the maximum torque output of the engine. Secondly, the torque converter of this 5AT transmission has a lock-up clutch, but the lock-up function can only be activated when the vehicle reaches a speed of 100 kmh and the gearbox remains in gear. In other words, when re-accelerating from 100 km h, the power response of the Ma6 will be more direct, and the loss of power transmission will be smaller, so overtaking at high speed will not feel like power meat.
As for the braking part, the braking force of the Ma 6 is relatively linear as a whole, but when I decelerate smoothly and need to make up a little more brake temporarily, the braking force response of the Ma 6 is not so sensitive, and in layman's terms, the braking foot feeling is a little soft. In addition, the brake pedal of the Ma 6 also lacks a sense of boundary after pressing to the end, that is, I don't know if the brake is pressed to death, so the confidence given by the Ma 6 is not strong when braking hard.
Among FAW's many joint venture partners, Mazda was the only one that openly transferred technology to FAW at the time. To this day, I can imagine how excited FAW Car was when it first received the full set of technical data for the Ma 6. The Ma6 was an epoch-making model, with many of the most advanced technologies of the time, so much so that 21 years later, the car still shows no signs of obsolescence in terms of driving experience. But after all, the Mazda 6 is a special product of that era, and today's Mazda is not as confident as it was when it was in the alliance with Ford, and even in the development of sports sedans, there has been a huge controversy within Mazda.
From the replacement of the Atez to the discontinuation of production, and then to the rear-drive six-cylinder horse 6 project, it shows that the era of medium-sized sports sedans has passed, and there are not many people who really like sports cars. Compared with the so-called sports, consumers now care more about comfort, space and intelligence, which is obviously not so good at Mazda.