2008 Mazda 2.3L, 134k mi, Under valve cover pic

[Chumango]

2008 Mazda 6, 2.3 liter engine, ~134,000 miles on it.

This is my wife's car, which now resides in a distant state. We use it when we visit family in the area. Until this trip maintenance was done by her or her kids. It pretty much lived on conventional oil, apparently changed on a reasonable frequency.

The valve cover gasket was replaced today. The intent was just to replace the spark plugs, which as far as I could tell had never been replaced (the manual says to replace at 75K). It was hard to tell with no maintenance records, but the auto shop she used in the past has no record of changing the spark plugs. Two of the spark plug wells were full of oil. I was hoping the minor gasket leaks on the outside would not yet need attention, but that was not the case.

I am a synthetic oil person, but this shows that conventional works if you treat the car to reasonable maintenance. It's not perfect but it is pretty clean. The oil was also changed today, in went M1 EP HM.

 

[wemay]

Not perfect? That looks fabulous! Well done.

 

[cheesepuffs2]

Which conventional (blends?) were most commonly used?

 

[Analog-1]

Looks perfect to me. Cam lobes look new.

 

[dnewton3]

Yes - conventional oils can do well in some circumstances.

Yes - that's a lot of oil in the plug well for Cyl 2,3.

 

[Chumango]

Which conventional (blends?) were most commonly used?

I don't know. The only receipts I could find were from Jiffy Lube, and they said Pennzoil.

 

[slacktide_bitog]

Looks good

 

[THORROMIG]

Whatever they were using, it kept it clean. Good job and thanks for the pics to share.

 

[joekingcorvette]

Looks nice and clean thanks for sharing!

 

[nwjones18]

Looks good to me! I've got a valve cover gasket waiting for me to put on mine... Curious what mine will look like, but it looks fine through the fill hole. Mine has been getting chevron 5w-30 blend for the past several years since I have a stash.

 

[xspeedy]

I have the same engine in a 09 Mazda 5. Had to replace the valve cover because a bit of the plastic that the coil pack threads into snapped off when my kid tried to break the screw loose. This had around 140K. Burns a bit of oil but nothing major.

 

[ripcord]

How does the oil minder work on this car? Our similar vintage Ford just came on every 5k miles.

 

[TomYoung]

Kind of thinking a 2008 car should be running synthetic.

 

[IndyIan]

That motor looks great!
My 2.0 duratec version must've had some interesting oil or long OCI's before I got it at ~150k miles. It had some oil in 3 of the 4 plug wells and a bit of a misfire at 180k and this is what I found. Cam lobes still seemed fine though.

Guess which plug was misfiring? It was tight when I removed it but it looks like the plug was loose for a while and must've rattled the centre electrode loose? It would slide freely out to the side electrode...

 

[Chumango]

How does the oil minder work on this car? Our similar vintage Ford just came on every 5k miles.

The Mazda does not have an oil minder. The manual specifies 7,500 mile/6 month OCI unless you fall under severe services, for which it says 5,000 miles/4 months. My 2005 Toyota Sienna oil minder comes on at 5,000 miles.

Kind of thinking a 2008 car should be running synthetic.

The manual does not even mention synthetic oil. I also have a 2008 Civic, and all its manual says about synthetic is that it can be used as long as it is the correct grade and has the correct API cert, but the oil minder must still be followed.

 

[STW]

2008 Mazda 6, 2.3 liter engine, ~134,000 miles on it.

This is my wife's car, which now resides in a distant state. We use it when we visit family in the area. Until this trip maintenance was done by her or her kids. It pretty much lived on conventional oil, apparently changed on a reasonable frequency.

The valve cover gasket was replaced today. The intent was just to replace the spark plugs, which as far as I could tell had never been replaced (the manual says to replace at 75K). It was hard to tell with no maintenance records, but the auto shop she used in the past has no record of changing the spark plugs. Two of the spark plug wells were full of oil. I was hoping the minor gasket leaks on the outside would not yet need attention, but that was not the case.

I am a synthetic oil person, but this shows that conventional works if you treat the car to reasonable maintenance. It's not perfect but it is pretty clean. The oil was also changed today, in went M1 EP HM.

View attachment 233164

Looks awesome.

 

[demarpaint]

Very nice.

 

[Stumpy]

I had a 2009 Ford Focus with the 2.0 Mazda engine. The valve cover gaskets are NOTORIOUS or leaking. Both my No. 2 and 3 spark plug wells were full of oil. Mine used lots of 5w-20 so I switched to 15w-40 and never looked back. Oil consumption went waaaay down. My in-laws have it now with over 300K miles.

 

[Chumango]

Oil consumption on this car using 5W20 is minimal. We'll see how it does with what is probably its first fill of full synthetic. I put in 5W20, but noticed that the manual says for the Mexican market if you can't find 5W20 use 5W30. I'll probably go to that the next oil change.

 

[IndyIan]

Yeah, I have sometimes run 5W20 in the winter, but now its 5W30 pretty much every time, and then I can run the same oil in the Subaru as well. Doesn't burn much oil, maybe a half quart on 6-8-10k mile OCI's