That’s fine, they are quite a tight fit.
Interesting to see how it goes. It’d be nice to know if the MIL comes on again after your ‘clean’ but before the oil change. And then if it comes on after the oil change if your ‘clean’ didn’t cure it.
Thanks Robbie. Always nice to know something like that is normal when you do it for the first time.
So the mechanics of it all seem OK. The Oil is the main other variable and I read somewhere that 10w oil on cold start may be a bit too thick on start up for some cars with the SVT/OCV gubbins thus my intention to try 0w grade which is supposed to get to the top of the engine quicker on start up. It is on start up from cold that I get the occasional rattle and have had the MIL (P0012) on.
I’ll keep this post informed of any further findings before or after said oil change (when I get round to it).
Just for reference, i had the same problem with this OCV and the P0012 error.
I took the filter, the OCV housing and the OCV and put it in my ultrasonic cleaner with white spirit in it, there was some crap that came out of it despite the oil being clean. The design of the OCV means it will stick even if it gets the slightest amount of gloopy oil.
It does give another pointer that an oil flush treatment in modern engines is really needed every oil change, with previous users or garages using cheap oil it leads to a buildup of crappy gloopy oil in the sump.
So far after 100miles i have not had another MIL or a noisey startup.
As an update as asked for by Robbie, since I did this back in December (approx 1000 miles ago) I have not had the MIL on again, so I don’t know. As I said then, I don’t think I acheived much because everything looked clean anyway. Still haven’t put the 0w/40 in yet.
Are you a member of the AA/RAC? If you are, then if the light comes on, just give them a call and they can come out with their laptop and plug in. All the patrols seem to have them, but make sure you tell them when you call that you have a warning light on the dashboard and don’t want to drive the car because it could be serious.
That will tell you the fault code. That little orange light could mean all kinds of things, with a fault code you have a much better chance of fixing it.
Jack.
Thanks Jack, but I don’t think they would be of any use in this case.
I have my own Fault Code reader and this particular code is P0012, which means Timing Camshaft A retarded. It only seems to appear on SVT engines shortly after startup and therefore we suspect that it is probably to do with the OCV on the VVT mechanism.
After I had the MIL on, I inspected and tested the OCV, cleaned it and it’s filter and found nothing wrong at all apart from the fact that I think the filter wasn’t seated properly when I dismantled it (might be wrong about that though). I reset the MIL and (touch wood) it hasn’t re-occured since. There was (and still is) a discernable clatter for about 1 second on startup (non HLA) which could be the oil pressure slow getting up to the OCV. Some people have suggested a lower winter Oil viscosity which I will use on my next Oil change. (10w/40 now - I’m going to use 0w/40)
In short this MIL code is a bit of a mystery that no-one has really got to the bottom of yet. I suspect it could be just one of thoses intermittent issues that is inherant in the design and is not really a problem. In normal use my engine runs superbly so I’m not going to worry too much over this.
PS - Incidently Mazda did issue a Technical Bulletin regarding this and issued some replacement parts, but my car is much later than the bulletin specifies and I believe should already have those parts, so perhaps they never solved the problem at all??