I refuse to believe late 2000 Mazda can have defective brake hose, master cylinder, abs sensor, mysterious air in the system, etc. My 2008 mazda5 with 78k mi had the infamous low pedal, swoosh sound, etc. All this happened when wifey was driving on the fwy onramp. It has Brand new pads, rotors in all 4 corners. Stopped like a dime until the dreaded low spongy pedal approximately 3 mos after the installed... The culprit? Stuck cylinder pins. Don't take these little bad boys lightly. i couldn't believe it either at first, but all components were checked out ok as i did a clean install and the car is still fairly new. So i cleaned the pins and piston real good and greased them back up w permatex caliper grease.... Voila.. Brakes are as good as new.


Those who use normal grease, tough luck.. Ur piston and sliders will gummed up due to high heat and became real sticky. Please use only caliper grease. Good luck. Hope this helps fellow member.

 

I find this interesting. My friend's Mazda 5 has this issue also. How exactly did you lubricate the pins? I haven't removed the wheel yet to look at the caliper but is that what you're referring to by "stuck cylinder pins"? Thanks in advance for any additional details you can provide.

 

This experience should apply to 2012 to 2015 Mazda 5s. My daughter took it to a shop. They bleed & flushed the brake lines. It was a little better but it still wasn't right. the pedal would keep going to near the floor before it stopped and felt like it was trying to meet some resistance along the way but not holding. The shop suggested it was a rear caliper that had a broken the piston retainer pin (keeps the piston out near the disk over time as the pad wears). I replaced that but it didn't cure the problem. The shop was recommending replacing the pads and rotors at a cost of near $800. I knew they were out in left field at this point. I did some research on it that suggested it might be the ABS pump. Don't know what the shops would have charged for labor but the part was $800 new. So I got a junk yard part and replaced it. My research suggested that I could do the bleeding myself but the ABS would need reprogramming. My plan was to replace the ABS pump and have it bled by a shop because I don't have any OBD equipment to activate the ABS for purging air. The plan was just to get the bleed as good as I could, then get it over to a shop to have it bleed. It wasn't easy because of the location and the propensity for extremely tight fittings to round out. We did the 2 person brake pedal bleed I noticed that 2 of the bleeder screws were loose. We pumped 2 quarts of brake fluid through the system. The color of the fluid improved considerably. Some funky stuff was happening between the fill reservoir and the master cylinder reservoir which were connected by a tube to gravity feed the master cylinder. I'm not sure if the shop never did the brake fluid flush and bleed correctly or if it was a bad ABS pump but the bottom line is that the brakes work great and ABS doesn't appear to need reprogramming.

 

Check your blinkers..

 

last year i had same a problem on Sebring. Could nit figure out what was wrong after rebuilding calipers and bleeding brakes. It was a perfectly good looking flex bake hose about 2 feet long. It had an internal walk collapse. Replaced it and everything was fine. Brake fluid would flow out when pedal pressed, but hose would collapse when foot lifted of brake in my case. You cannot visually see this by looking at rubber brake hoses. For $35 a hose replace them.