Hi Guys,

As above, I'm wondering what the general thoughts are around the expected lifetime of a Turbocharger. The reason I ask is because the one in my folks Mazda CX-7 has given up and they're now looking at a bill of... wait for it... £4000!!!

The car is a 2010 on a 59 plate, purchased from Mazda 13 months ago (Feb 2013). They paid £15,000 for the car and it had only covered about 38K miles. It has a full dealer service history and at present only has 47K miles (was last serviced and MOT'd last month at the same Mazda dealership). The warranty just expired last month. The dealership have contacted Mazda UK to see if they will cover any of the repair costs but I'm thinking that this may fall under the sale of goods act as the vehicle wasn't fit for purpose. I think it is resonable to expect the Turbo on a car of this age / mileage / service history to last longer than 47K miles. I would also expect a £15,000, 3 year old vehicle (at time of purchase) to last more than 13 months. Does anyone have any thoughts or experiance in this area before I go marching down to Mazda and giving them an earful?

Small note - If you search for "CX-7 Turbocharger Problems", you will see they are plentiful HOWEVER these all relate to the petrol version. There are no common or known faults with the 2.2 Diesel engine / turbo in these cars.

Would appreciate any thoughts chaps / chapesses.

Well my first, original fitment turbo on my 20VT lasted 85k miles before it began to sound like a siren. The replacement has done another 85k and is going strong. So I would expect better than 47k. But I'm sure it depends on oil changes, driving styles and 100 other things. I doubt you could claim not fit for purpose 13 months after buying the car. Probably it's a case of any deal you can negotiate is a good deal. £4k looks steep if it's just a turbo change. Maybe worth trying an independent specialist rather than main dealer - dealers exist to sell cars, not to fix them, they all have huge labour costs, are generally incompetent etc.

Thanks wink. Yeah, I would have thought anything under 80K-100K on a modern (not even high performance) diesel would be premature failure. Sale of goods act will still apply however, as they have owned the car for over 6 months, it is their responsibility to show that the turbo failed prematurely despite a full dealer service history. That will be the difficult part as, like you say, other factors such as driving style are near impossible to prove. Will be calling the garage soon to find out how much Mazda are willing to contribute (if anything).

I cant imagine they will cover all costs but I will then be speaking to the dealer regarding the £4000 quote. I dont know how they came to that figure? Turbocharger should be approx £500 - £600, maybe 2 hours labour for a professional Mazda mechanic? Wish I was on £1700 per hour.

When the turbo went on my '02 530d, BMW wanted £1200 for the turbo alone, plus all kinds of ancilliary gubbins and labour. I ended up getting a recon exchange turbo from a reputable specialist and the whole bill from an independent mechanic came to £1200.
And similarly, yet different, Kia wanted over £2000 to change the diesel fuel pump on our Sedona, which was a few months out of Kia's 7-year warranty, so even seemingly trivial parts can cost an arm and a leg. I'm led to believe it's partly because the way they are designed makes it very time consuming to fix, therefore labour is horrendous.

I hope you can get it sorted relatively painlessly.

Well thats the thing. If Mazda don't agree to cover most of the cost, it would probably be more cost effective to have the car taken to a specialist to either recon or replace the turbo at a fraction of Mazda price. According to a Mazda Technician online, Mazda state that a turbo replacement on the CX-7 should take 3 hours.

Well, as you say above, even if the parts come to £2500, that's still £500/hour for labour by Mazda's own reckoning!

I'm in the wrong job Jim! I barely get half that an hour!

The turbo for a 20vt coupe is nearly £2K from Fiat and the one for your Mazda will likely be similarly priced. It's possible they even price the turbo at £3K or more.

I doubt that a turbo failing at 47K in itself will be considered proof of a defective part. If the average is around 60K to 90K then for every turbo still going strong at 120K or more there'll be some failing at (well) below 50K.

Even if the dealer agrees to cover 50% of the cost it would still be much cheaper to have a refurb'd turbo fitted by an independent specialst.

How much is a turbo or refurb? £5-600?
My local garage only charges £45 ph labour!

Well, spoke to the garage, to be fair they are trying to have the full cost covered by Mazda and the warranty company because they've submitted a report to each of them (although the warranty expired last month, we informed Mazda during the warranty period that the oil light had occasionally come on while driving - this apparently indicates that the turbo had possibly started to fail while still under warranty).

Also, I did mention that £4K was very steep for a turbo replacement. Mazda have now confirmed that this price includes a replacement short engine (never heard of this but it's apparently the engine block below the cylinder head) as the turbo took that out when it died!

Anyway, not likely to know about the costs until Monday as it can take a few days for approval.

Thanks for the replies chaps, will wait and see the outcome! (I tell you, I'm glad it's not my car!)

From your description I'd say you've a good case for a sales of goods claim.

If what you've posted is accurate (I'm not doubting you), then it sounds like you've had oil pressure issues. I'd speculate that what happened is low oil pressure finished the bottom end (short engine) which then took the turbo with it.

Our 2 litre TDI (140bhp)Leon, 112,000 miles. Original turbo, clutch, gearbox the lot. Touch wood, all is well... other than occasional ABS sensor issues and rear wheel bearings... oh and a front spring.

My last car, A Pug 307 2.0 HDi, did 85k + with no turbo issues. I would expect a modern diesel turbo to last 100k miles with impunity.

My coops' turbo just clocked 135k miles... And it's smoking like Snoop Dogg. It was embarrasing in the multi storey car park. Still boosting to 1.25 bar no problems and pulling like a train.

My bravo diesel's turbo is fine at 113k - and the first 35k it was ragged...

What szkom said.

' we informed Mazda during the warranty period that the oil light had occasionally come on while driving'



Oil light comes on when you have virtually no oil pressure. Has the oil level always been checked whilst your folks had the car? If so, they might be able to argue that the damage was caused by the previous owner. I suspect the turbo failure is the symptom rather than the cause of the trouble. £4k for short engine & turbo sounds more plausible. Bad luck.

Okay, so price to repair is now £4500, Mazda are prepared to pay 60%, leaving us (well, the parents) with a £2K bill. Called the Customer Services and said we weren't happy with that so they're looking at it again and may offer to pay more. Hopefully between 75 - 80 %.

This is what they suspect happened - One of the injectors was leaking fuel into the engine. This caused a build up of carbon in a filter within the sump (or something like that). This caused the oil pressure to drop which in turn destroyed the engine and turbo. As we informed them of the oil light issue last month, I think that they should have looked into it a bit more instead of telling us "theres nothing they can do until they see it happen themselves" - I.E. wait till it really breaks! Well, we didn't have to wait long.

Find out on Monday if they're willing to pay more. Mentioned the sale of goods act and that had them worried I think. We wouldn't actually go down this route because it can take months and we need the car back.

And I thought this was going to be a my mazdas just done x hundred k on its original turbo!

Think the moral of this tail is - if you have a warning light on and a warranty make sure it's sorted rather than taking the first answer from the dealer!

Hope it's gets sorted foc!

Just to update (and put this to bed), Mazda we're sticking to their guns in that they were not prepared to offer any more than 60%. The Customer relations manager was incredibly rude and told me that the Sale of Goods act did not apply as the warranty had expired. This was obviously nonsense as the sale of goods act does apply to the sale of used cars regardless of warranty. Anyhoo, she said the only way I could take it further would be to take them to court. My request to speak to her manager was declined. I sent a further email advising them to reopen the case and failure to do so would result in legal action. I then received a call from the Managers boss advising that he had reviewed the full case and was willing to offer 80% towards the bill (leaving the folks with just a £1000 bill).

At this point I decided to quit while I was ahead. They're getting a new short engine, new injectors, new turbo plus a few other things and they're going to pay the £1000 for it.

Sometimes if you shout loud enough and sound like you know more than you actually do, it pays off!

We have a 59 plate Mazda 6 diesel 2.2 at work.
Currently just shy of 192k. Original turbo.

£4k is clearly Mazda's own parts at hugely inflated prices. The original turbo on my Alfa diesel started whining at around 160,000 miles and I had it refurbed and fitted for around a quarter of what Mazda are asking.

I would suggest that your folks could offer Mazda two choices:-

1) They replace the turbo at their own expense

2) They make a contribution of (say) £1500 for you to have it done at a reputable indy

Nah, the fault was an injector leaking into the engine causing carbon build up which resulted in the oil pressure dropping which destroyed the engine and turbo.

It's just about ready to collect now so hopefully no more issues with it for a while. Lesson learned from this - If you have a warning light on, make sure it gets investigated! Don't accept an answer like we got "Wait until it gets worse then we'll know whats wrong".

Trouble is - with gauges you can see *trends* even if they're not calibration accuracy... but the tendency these days is just to fit an 'oops, too late' light.

Which people will ignore anyway.