Hi, all! Just bought a 2012 Mazda5 6MT. She needs some work but I'm pretty stoked.





She’ll be joining our BMW E90 M3 6MT sedan, which until now was our year-round everything car: school runs to track days, road trips and weekend fun drives, all weather including snow and salt.




Living in a city, we never needed more than one car. Only a matter of time before kids changed that. The M3 sedan was great for the first few years, but it's coming time for something more tailor-made for everyday driving. Since I insist on manual transmissions, and we wanted 3 rows, the 5 was really the only option. Thankfully it's a good vehicle.

Even looking nationwide, there were so few gen-2 Mazda5 6MTs for sale that I basically had to pick rust, accidents, or miles. I chose miles. This car came to me with over 157k, but apparently most of that was in central Texas. Hope that was the right call.

Over the next month or so, the 5 will be getting:

- Koni Special Active dampers
- Kenwood DMX907S for wireless CarPlay
- Volvo brake pads
- All three powertrain mounts
- LED headlight bulbs
- Spark plugs
- All operating fluids

Also a few fixes like headlight housing restoration, rear window motors, and a new antenna.

Leather-wrapped steering wheel coming at some point. Fluid Film or similar underbody coating in winter. Lighter wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport AS4 tires coming in spring. The stock wheels will become the winter set.

Overall, the plan is to keep the car stock or OE+.

Plenty of cosmetic blemishes but I’m likely to let most of those be. I was never one to spend time or effort making sure my car was pretty.

Hope you all will indulge some noob questions, plus at least one potentially unusual one for this platform. I’ve searched a lot of this stuff but maybe I haven’t looked hard enough. Apologies in advance if I’ve missed anything obvious.

1. What’s a good service manual just to have as a reference? Hard to find anything specific to the gen-2 US cars. I’ve found some pretty comprehensive materials for the 1.8 and 2.0 engine versions, and of course some gen-1 stuff, but nothing for gen-2 2.5.
   
2. Has anyone made a list of parts shared with Volvos? I know of a few (strut/shock mounts, front struts, brake pads, etc.) and am building my own list, but I have to imagine someone has compiled one somewhere.
   
3. If clutch pedal effort is higher than normal, does that suggest a very new or very old clutch? Or something else like a worn slave cylinder? I’m not sure if clutch pedal effort is higher than normal on this car, but it’s higher than in my M3, so I’m weighing potential preemptive fixes.
   
4. Is there any chassis bracing for this car that’s actually worthwhile and available in the US? I see packages from Hardrace, Ultra Racing, etc., but a lot of it looks like it does nothing, and it’s all either NLA, RHD-specific, or shipped from potentially sketchy vendors.

Thanks to everyone who read this far. Hope to have some good updates soon!

 

So I guess this might as well turn into something of a build thread. Pics may be spotty but hopefully I can offer something worthwhile.

The first few weeks were pretty interesting. I did a great deal of learning, often having to correct for hasty decisions.

Ordinarily I'd have educated myself much more on the car before buying it: common problems, what parts to select, parts sources and costs, etc. That would have been part of the calculus in deciding what car to buy, for obvious reasons. This time, there was no such calculus. We wanted more than 5 seats and more than 2 pedals, so it was always going to be a Mazda5 6MT. All we really needed to know was whether we could likely afford it, and it seemed we could. Given that and an unexpectedly busy work schedule, I ended up skipping a lot of the detailed research until after the purchase – which predictably led to some less-than-optimal decisions. Hope at least some of those make for good stories!

 

One of the first tasks was an engine oil change. Here's the drain plug as it came to me:


Fortunately it came right out, and a stock-replacement one went right in. Kind of blows my mind how someone could do this kind of damage without over-torquing or stripping the threads. Either way, I'll take the win.

For the engine oil, I went with Liqui Moly Special Tec AA 0W-20 from FCP Euro, purely to take advantage of their lifetime replacement. I had strongly considered just going with Mobil 1 EP 0W-20 or something and foregoing the lifetime replacement; it's cheap and would save me the trouble of packing the old oil up etc. However, I already do at least 1 FCP Euro return yearly for my M3, so this doesn't add much. I'm also happy to keep stuff around for a while until I have a bunch to return, which saves further on shipping.

For the oil filter, I went with a Mobil 1 Extended Performance oil filter from Rock Auto, my parts source for basically everything non-OE that I couldn't get from FCP Euro. But that decision had been made before some helpful forum members pointed me toward good online retailers for Mazda OE parts. I think I'll go with Mazda oil filters from the next oil change onward. Happy to have any feedback on that.

 

Shocks and struts were another early job. I was super excited for Koni Special Actives, having experienced the old FSDs on a friend's E46 3-Series. It rode spectacularly, and the only complaint I ever heard was weird limit handling. Seemed like a completely fair tradeoff for a FWD family hauler.

The front Special Actives are shared with Volvos, which means they’re available on FCP Euro. Not much of a value add as they are already warrantied for life through Koni; the main benefit of FCP Euro’s warranty is that it’s basically unconditional.

To aid the job, I had this tool from working on my M3, which also has MacPherson struts with clamps up front. You stick the tool in the gap vertically, put a wrench on it, crank it 90º, and it spreads the clamp. Made it much easier to get the struts out.


Wasn't enough to get the new ones in, though – but it helped. For final assembly, I used a big flat-head screwdriver that happened to have a 10mm hex shaft. With a jack pushing up on the spindle, I stuck the screwdriver head in the gap, put a 10mm open-ended wrench on the shaft, and cranked until the strut popped into place.

Installed pics:




Thought it was weird that the PS strut has that nice fin on the back but the DS one doesn't. Made the DS one more annoying to line up. Nothing a Sharpie and some fiddling couldn't fix, though.

I originally went with Sachs from Rock Auto for the strut mounts. Figured that if the stock ones were keyed for LH/RH, I should probably stick with ones that were also keyed that way. So, I ordered the pair...



...but inside the box for the PS mount (left), there was another DS mount!


Wanting to get the car back on the road in short order, I overnighted another Sachs PS mount from Autozone. I got yet another box with the correct part number printed on the outside but the wrong part inside. 🤬

Figured it had to be a warehouse issue or something, and that I'd need to look elsewhere. The only decent-quality replacement I could easily get my hands on was a KYB – which doesn't have the locating pin, so can be used on either side. An Autozone near me had one, so I could get it same-day. So, now I have one Sachs and one KYB strut mount. #ShrugLife

The one functional part I neglected to replace was the front bump stops. The ones that were in there looked okay so I thought nothing of it. Hope that wasn't a mistake.

Forgot to take pics of the rears, sadly. Easy AF though, and I'm sure y'all know what they'd look like. Special Actives, KYB shock mounts, VW MkIV Golf bump stops (because FCP Euro), and whatever boots the car came to me with.

Initially, ride quality was... interesting. Nice and smooth over most roads, but crashy as heck on big bumps. Turns out a lot of the crashiness was due to some combination of:

- Completely shot front LCA bushings,
- Worn ARB end links, and
- Worn ARB bushings.

I say this because, after replacing all of those, it got much better. I went OE Mazda for the front LCAs and ARB bushings, and Lemförder for the ARB end links (FCP Euro again).

The ARB bushings were a massive PITA! I could not for the life of me get the brackets on. Factory procedure is to pull the subframe so the bar can be worked on off the car, and then press the brackets on with a vise. So many levels of not-gonna-happen. Instead, I used silicone spray to get the brackets most of the way on – enough to get the bolts in – and then used the bolts to push the brackets the rest of the way on. If this was a mistake, I can't tell thus far.

Hard to overestimate how much this all transformed the car. Ride and body control went from floppy-sloppy to very good for this kind of vehicle. The main outstanding problem was a bit of undamped vibration, which was greatly reduced with the full rear suspension refresh I did later (see below).

 

The eagle eyed among you will have noticed the cruddy looking headlights in the first pic I posted. I refinished them using the relatively simple method in this video as a reference:
Before:


During:


After:


Looks good in pics, but the orange peel is real:


...maybe because I didn't quite apply the clearcoat right.

Also, I know I didn't get all the fuzziness out because some of it is still there.

...But I kind of don't care. Does that make me a scrub? 😬

 

The parts source journey has been an interesting one.

I had become convinced over the years that OE is always the way to go unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise (money doesn't count except in dire situations). I had become a passionate follower of this strategy, to the point that I'd often go with BMW-branded stuff for certain critical parts on my M3 even when the (supposedly) exact same part was available without the BMW logo for much less money.

When I got the 5, though, I was initially enchanted by the idea of getting good-enough quality parts for a fraction the price of OE. For some reason I figured the differences between high quality aftermarket (e.g. Sachs, Moog, etc.) and genuine Mazda wouldn't matter as much on this car. So, I did a lot of Rock Auto hunting.

Didn't take more than a couple of orders to make me return to my previous ways. It's not that I've been burned yet or anything; it's that I've had to spend so much time under this car that I'm putting a much higher value on not having to repeat anything, and that means I'm no longer interested in less-than-max-quality parts. As the suspension refresh job has expanded in scope (I realized I need tie rods and wanted to refresh every bushing in the rear suspension), I've dismissed everything I've seen on Rock Auto and will be going OE for almost everything.

As of now, and I think for the foreseeable future, my parts sources in order of priority are

1. FCP Euro where possible, for the lifetime replacement guarantee
2. Mazda OE
3. Others only when necessary for some reason

 

Kenwood DMX907S installed:


First thing on this car that I've had done by professionals when I could have DIYed. Not a fan of the money I spent, but a big fan of the results and time saved.

I miss the volume **** TBH. So worth it for CarPlay, though!

Bonus: The radio tuner is better than the stock one, and of course so is the sound quality.

 

Stickers!

 

Rear brake caliper pins. One is from my Mazda5; the other is from my M3. Can you tell which is which?

Appears to be the same part – except that the ones on my Mazda5 seemed to require an Allen wrench between 6mm and 7mm, and half of them were mangled pretty badly; I had to use a Torx bit (T50 I think) on a breaker bar to get them loose. Luckily I had a full (albeit used) set of spare pins from my M3, which take a 6mm Allen and haven't been horribly mistreated. Swapped them in with a set of brand new Volvo brake pads.

Bonus: the dust caps for the pins are also the same as on my M3. Also fortunate, because my Mazda5 was missing two of them.

Really liking the Volvo pads so far. Good pedal feel, right amount of initial bite for street use, plenty of reserve braking power when things get hairy. No idea about fade resistance, and hopefully it'll stay that way.




Volvo fuel cap! 😬 PN is 31392044. Seems to fit and work perfectly, though the casing is much bigger than the stock one.

Also did OE Mazda inner & outer tie rods, and rear anti-roll bar end links from TRW. Pretty easy job.

Next job was to fix this crap:

The tires, I mean.

What's in the pic is what the car came with. I had intended to drive on them until it was time for winter tires, then ditch them when I swap winter tires onto the the stock wheels, and get new 3-season tires with new wheels next spring. I knew this tire would suck, but I figured I could just drive slower for a while and it'd be okay.

Holy crap was I wrong. Even with most of their tread remaining, these tires were a nightmare in the wet. Felt like driving on snow. Trouble accelerating uphill and braking downhill. Constant accidental wheelspin in second gear, and the occasional slip in third. It often took real work to keep up with – or avoid rear-ending – the person in front of me, even at normal traffic speeds.

I've never cared less about chewing up tires with a bad alignment.

 

New shoes!





The wheels are the lightest 16" option that was on TireRack with close to the stock width and offset. 16x7, +50, 16.6 lbs each. Not feeling the look, but... also not caring enough to change them. As I said at the outset, I'm not one to spend money or effort making the car look pretty.

Tires are Michelin Pilot All Season 4. Even in their first miles, still covered in the factory mold lubricant, they gripped like shy toddlers compared to the crap the car came with.

Overall, they're an excellent match for this car in my use. I can drive as enthusiastically as I want to on public roads and still have a ton of margin for error. I had hoped for a bit more of a sporty feel than I got, but my expectations on that point are probably unfair. What's important is that the grip is there in spades. That's a great thing because I like how deep into summer and early in spring I can run this tire, and I'm glad I don't have to accept subpar levels of summer grip for that privilege.

To underscore the difference between a good tire and those blasted Linglongs: Apparently it's harder to get wheelspin or engage ABS with brand new Michelin Pilot Sport All Season 4s on a wet road than it was with the Linglongs on a hot dry road.

Holy moly am I glad to have real tires. And now I'm having nightmares about all the other cars I see that run tires as crappy as those Linglongs. So horrifying that tires like that are even a thing.