Mazda Reviews

Modern cars absolutely hate having low battery voltage. It throws everything into chaos and can easily produce the sort of problems you’re having as the major components of a car are, these days, all controlled by computers.

By turning the car off and on again, you’re effectively performing the old Alt-Ctrl-Del function to reboot a home computer or laptop. As such, and especially since the transmission works perfectly when you reset it, this is almost certainly an electrical problem. A more permanent reset might be needed, so try leaving the battery disconnected overnight and then reconnect it next morning. This will often return things to normal.

First things first: are you sure the leak is coming from the gearbox and not the engine? It can be very hard to discern the difference in a manual car, although it’s easier in an automatic as the transmission fluid is usually a red colour.

Beyond that, oil can escape from a gearbox through a variety of places. The breather could be allowing fluid out, the pan seal could be leaking, the rear gearbox seal could be faulty or you could even have a cracked transmission casing. Don’t rule out a leaking drain plug, either, as this is a very common source of a leak. You might even find the leak is coming from somewhere within the transmission cooler and its plumbing.

It’s a bit hard to know what’s going on here. If a tyre is scrubbing on its inside edge, it’s often a problem with the camber settings (the amount of lean on the tyre from top to bottom). If it was realigned incorrectly, it’s conceivable that too much camber was removed and now the opposite problem is occurring where the outside edge is wearing too quickly. That said, sometimes incorrect toe-in and toe-out settings can cause similarly odd tyre wear.

Either way, this sort of problem should not be beyond the skills of a wheel alignment specialist to rectify without any mechanical changes to the vehicle or its suspension. In extreme cases, adjustable suspension bushes or mounting points can be fitted in place of the standard items to provide a greater range of adjustment. You may find that rectification is warranty issue, but if the misalignment came about through wear and tear or hitting a pothole or big bump, then it may not be covered by the factory warranty. Previous crash damage that has not ben repaired properly is also another common cause of weird tyre wear due to poor wheel alignment.