The latch release for the rear hatch of my 2014 CX-5 does not work when the temperature drops below 45 degrees or so. Key fob release doesn’t work, using the interior unlock button doesn’t work. There’s an audible click that sounds like activator has juice but pulling the latch handle does nothing. This is a real pain when I’m on a road trip when it’s cold overnight and want to load up in the morning. (The manual release inside the compartment in the hatch itself does work, but you have to crawl back behind the rear seat to get to it)
The first time it happened I was in on a road trip in Colorado. I took it to a dealership in Denver–they couldn’t replicate the problem but replaced the latch activator at my request. The new hatch release worked fine after that but I didn’t run into any cold weather on the rest of the trip.
Sure enough, the next cold snap, the hatch release didn’t work again. Took it to the dealer in San Jose and they couldn’t find anything wrong. It failed again on the next road trip and I took it to a dealership in Salt Lake City. When I dropped it off early in the morning I was able to demonstrate the failure to the service advisor, so he knew there was definitely a problem.
But…by the the mechanic got around to looking at it, the latch was working fine. I have to hand it to him, he spent a good hour checking everything he could think of, but couldn’t find anything and they didn’t charge me. Sure enough, later in the trip when it got down to the 30s the latch wouldn’t work in the morning.
Since then I’ve seen multiple threads on Mazda forums about the problem and nobody seems to have found a definitive fix. One popular theory is that the battery might be going bad, but it’s happened with an almost-new battery. I guess I just have to be resigned to using the rear side doors on cold mornings to load up my stuff.
My first car ('95 Hyundai Accent) had so much stuff go south on it. Drive shaft broke, shifting cable snapped, oil tank wore out. Turned on the wipers on the Queensway one day and one of them javelined off behind the car
My second car (2009 Hyundai Elantra…I hadn’t learned) had a compressor that cracked and had to be replaced three damn times. Nothing like driving the Ontario highways in the heat of summer with just warm air blowing through the vents. Then there was the time the clip holding the brake and fuel line corroded its way through both the lines. Stupidly, I took the car to the dealer rather than a Canadian Tire: they went through the manufacturer’s official supply chain and one part had to come from Mississippi and the other had to come from Oregon, and it took three weeks to get fixed. And oh yeah, the wiper fluid tube wore out in the middle of winter.
My current car is a Kia Soul. I’ve told the story here before, but in a nutshell, a mouse got into the system before I took delivery, then crawled out onto my dashboard to give me a heart attack on my drive home from work. Three weeks later when the smell was making the car undriveable, I finally managed to get an appointment at a Kia dealership and they found that mama mouse had birthed a litter of wee ones, whose corpses I had been breathing in for weeks.
Had a rear hatch latch issue on my 2002 VW GTI. The hatch would work perfectly if all you did was use the keyfob or interior unlock button to unlock it. If you used the key on the hatch to unlock it, you could turn the lock cylinder too far, because I’m sure some little plastic tab had broken. That put the entire latch mechanism out of alignment, so you couldn’t open the hatch at all.
I fixed it by removing the door panel on the rear hatch, manually realigning everything, and then just didn’t use the key in the hatch anymore. That was assisted by buying cheap knockoff keyfobs that worked much, much better than the original VW ones ever did.
I had a 78 F-150 that would randomly lock into 3rd gear. You had to crawl underneath and manipulate the gear levers. Lots of fun in the dark and in 0 degree weather.
Friend of mine was visiting me in Vegas. Lent him my '65 Ford F-250. He was going down The Strip, hit the brakes and they failed. He went for the parking brake handle (attached to nothing) and it pulled out of the dash in his hand. He had to avoid an accident by bailing over the sidewalk into The Mirage garden. He calls me, tells me what happened and to act fast.
Grabbed a can of fluid and a pair of vice-grips. Got there, lots of panic and disarray. I found the blown hose, clamped it off, refilled and got the hell out of there maybe a second before the tow truck showed up.
I still don’t believe that happened. I just typed it and don’t believe it.
I had a Buick Regal once that developed an odd flaw in the heater fan. At the end of a drive, the fan wouldn’t turn off, even if the engine was turned off, and would make a small shrieking noise. The first couple of times I was alone and in my garage. I don’t know that much about engines, but I could at least pop the hood and take a look. Since there was a hammer nearby, and I could locate the fan by shriek, I tried a little percussive maintenance. It worked. I was mostly broke, so I took a shot at not turning on the heater or ventilation.
This is back when my kids were young. Going without the heater worked for about a week. Then, with the kids in the car, I started on an errand run. Half a mile down the road, without being turned on, the thing starts to SHRIEK. I pull over. Turning off the engine does not help. The noise has the kids’ full attention. What’s going on? Is the car going to explode?
I have no hammer, so I open the hood and look around for a rock, a good sized one. The kids are kind of perplexed by this. The first whack lowers the noise a bit. The second whack sends the fan free-spinning down to a stop. I toss the rock aside and get back in. All eyes are on me. I shrug.
“The fan was sticking,” I say. “We need to get it fixed.” They were pleased with that. Smiles all around. It’s apparently good to know that there are some problems that can be solved by hitting it with a rock.
In college, I bought a total beater 1972 VW Bus that had traveled to Central America and/or came from there, don’t remember. The fuel gauge did not work. I had to use the odometer to determine when I needed to get gas. Unfortunately, I did a lot of both city and highway driving along with living in a very train crossing heavy area. So sometimes my MPG guestimates failed. First time, I ran out almost in front of a gas station but after that I kept not only a gas can but a ten speed bike in the back.
Hehe, I had a 69 Cougar afflicted with the same problem. Before I fixed it, it never seemed to fail that when my girlfriend asked “Hey, think you need to stop for gas?” and I replied “Nah, I think I have plenty.”, we were assured to run out of gas that evening.
I had an old Buick where the key got stuck in the ignition with the car turned on, and the ignition wouldn’t turn so I couldn’t turn the car off. That particular problem didn’t leave me stranded, I just couldn’t turn the engine off when I got home.
I popped the hood to increase airflow, called AAA, and then tried to research on the 1990s Internet how to turn off a running car without damaging it.
Fortunately the locksmith AAA sent showed up pretty quickly. He popped the steering wheel off and took apart the steering column in about 3 minutes. He took out the lock cylinder, turned the car off, and pulled the key out. He then scolded me for using a key that had worn so much it could get stuck.
He cut me a new key, put everything back together, and was on his way. That one call was worth about 4 years of AAA dues.
Not really a “car” problem, but hopefully unusual - a guy tried to commit suicide by throwing himself under my car about 2 months go.
He was wondering around aimlessly in the road at 10:00am, so I thought he was drunk. As I approached he ducked down his head and ran straight at my car. Fortunately I had already slowed down and was able to take defensive action: I hit him on the left shoulder and my front tire ran over his right leg, fortunately just missing his knee.
My knowledge of first aid in that scenario is pretty limited, so I made sure he was alive, not bleeding profusely and could wiggle his toes. I then deferred to a passer-by who had first aid training.
Apparently - from a later arrival who questioned the unfortunate man - he had been on a bender for 3 days, and when he arrived at work with no excuse for missing time, he was fired.
I had a used Chevy I got from a mechanic. So the thing should run fine? Well, usually. Some times it just refused to start for a while. A couple calls to the mechanic to have them take a look and they can’t find anything. And this is a real problem, since my job at the time required me to drive around to collect money at different parking lots around town. So I was stopping and starting a lot.
Finally got it figured out. A previous owner has poorly wired the transmission’s neutral safety, so sometimes the circuit wasn’t closed. A whole lot of pain and annoyance for a loose wire but.
Also had the rear window fall out driving on the freeway one day.
Don’t know if I’d call it a “problem”, but my brothers Chevy Colorado owners manual says it has a 21 gallon fuel tank and we’ve several times filled it to over 27 gallons.
I had a foreign car once that I couldn’t buy windshield wipers for. Nothing from the U.S. fit.
I had a '72 Plymouth Fury when I was in my late teens. Even though it was only 8 years old it had a zillion miles on it. I got it for $150 and had to borrow fifty bucks from my old man to buy it. Anyway, it was kind of a boat and had a huge engine, a 440 IIRC. One day I had floored it and the cable to the carbonator stretched and stuck wide open. Until I could get it fixed the engine was revving wide open. I had to shift into neutral to brake at stop signs. Then when I shifted back to drive the car would peel out lickity split. I had to constantly shift in neutral while driving so I didn’t go 120mph everywhere. That was a stressful week!
Only twice have I had my oil light come on while driving. Each time I was about to go through the same town, once heading north and once heading south. I was able to pull into a garage and check the car. Each time the sump was drained dry. What made it interesting was that, on both occasions the problem was a broken, leaking oil pressure switch. So, the only times that my oil light has ever came on while driving were when the part designed to tell me, failed. A bolt screwed in there would have been more useful.
Yeah, I remember googling the issue years ago and finding that recommendation. It didn’t seem to make any difference for me, but the problem happened so infrequently anyway it was hard to tell whether it did or not.
My first car was an early '80s land yacht. One day when the car was about 12 years old, I was on a 500-mile interstate trip. I stopped for gas, and the car wouldn’t start afterwards, no electrical power at all. I figured my battery was shot, so I got a jump start. What I didn’t realize at the time was that my battery was absolutely fine; it was just that the main positive cable had come loose from the battery’s terminal. Oblivious to the real nature of the problem, I carried on down the interstate highway.
An hour later, it was dark out and I was in a rural area - so, minimal ambient lighting, just me and my headlights. Suddenly the engine started to stumble badly. The rotor inside the distributor had disintegrated, so no ignition happening anymore, and now the car and transmission were keeping the engine spinning. This kept the alternator spinning, which kept the electricity flowing in spite of the shitty connection at the battery. But with the engine stumbling, my first instinct was to put the transmission in neutral. This let the engine die completely. Now the alternator wasn’t providing any electricity, so the entire car goes black. No headlights, no hazards, turn signals dash lights, nothing. At 65 MPH. At night. Suddenly I couldn’t see a damn thing, and I had one chance to get the car pulled over to the right of the fog line without going so far that I started killing mile markers. Somehow I got it right, and managed to hitch a ride to my destination and then call a repair shop to come tow my car and fix it.
A mouse got into my AC and died. In June of 199-something. The smell was ASTOUNDING for about a week.
Some decades later, I found a bunch of nuts piled on top of my battery. I had been taking my bike to work and walking to the grocery store so much that I hadn’t used the car in a few weeks. So a rodent had made a little stash under the hood. Not really a problem but adjacent.
I had a Toyota pickup like that, back when it was just the “pickup,” and didn’t have a name. The owners manual said it had a 14 gallon tank, but I would routinely put 14.5–15 gallons in it. I assumed the gas stations were ripping me off, and would stop going to each station as I found them inaccurate.
At some point I got a hold of the service manual, and that said the truck had a 17 gallon tank. Sure enough, if I ran it down until the low fuel light came on, and then drove another 10 miles, I could put in 16.5 gallons.
