|:: Project - Fix Mazda MPV - Part 1 ::|

my dad and mom left for vietnam to visit family and deal with family affairs. they left my brother and i at the house along with my dad's crap load of cars. he has the most cars under his name than anyone in our household. i have my civic, my brother has his del sol, my mom has her corolla, and my dad had a sedan benz, a suv benz, and a mazda mpv van. and they are all sitting in the backyard collecting dust till my parents come home.

of the three cars that my dad is hording, the mazda mpv is not working. when we try to start it using the key, there is no response; the car lies lifeless. so after he left, i was left with the task of fixing the darn thing, but problem is, i don't know a thing about fixing cars... yet. since i am always up to learn something new, i wanted to really tackle this problem.

i called over my brother's friend, jon, to help me with the project. the goal is to fix the mpv so that it runs again. so this post is dedicated to the fixing of the mpv and the things that we tried. i will try to update this post whenever we work on the mpv until we get it working again... hopefully. (although i found a craigslist posting for a similar mpv for only 30,000 pennies... i mean $300.)

to begin the project, here is what we knew:
1) the battery is not the problem because we just replaced it with a new one
2) the car ran before and had problems starting long before the break down
3) it's not the alternator's problem also because that was replaced along with the battery
4) when we tried to start the car, there is a hissing noise and nothing else

chapter 1 : hypothesis - the starter is broken
goal : remove the starter unit and examine it

alright the goal is pretty straight forward, get the starter off the car and test it to see if it is broken. after doing some quick research about where the starter is on the mpv, we found that it was only accessible from the bottom of the car. which meant we had to jack the car up on stands so that we could work on the bottom to get the part out. sounds easy? well it's NOT! it took 2 guys pushing from the back of the car using a lot of momentum, plus 1 guy from the front to balance out the power so that the car wouldn't run over the stands and ultimately come crashing down. after a good 45 minutes... we crashed the car on the stands once, got scared, swore a lot, looked at each other, and then tried again. second time's the charm!

now that the stupid thing was on the two stands, it was time to get underneath and see what kind of beast we were dealing with. we busted out our trusty guide book which showed up where the starter was located and how to take it apart, of course the book was pretty much useless on instructing us on the process... but it did show us where relatively the part was. instruction said, take apart the three bolts that was holding the starter to the engine block. sounds simple? yeah it was, but then the fucking part had no way of coming out from under the car. the damn thing was entrapped in by the stupid frame of the car from underneath, and from the top... don't even think about it because you won't even be able to see the damn thing.

there was all but two wholes that were deceivingly small so no matter how we struggled with the darn thing, it was not coming out. okay, that was a good hour of time gone. now what? maybe if we take apart the metal casing that was hiding all the parts under the frame? yeah!!! that might work; let's do it... great idea, except the 4 bolts that was securing the casing was torqued on so tightly that i almost pee-ed my pants trying to unbolt it. but, after another 15 minutes and enough cursing to turn a saint into a devil... we got the bolts loosened. alright, now we're rocking! that's what we thought... after removing all the crazy bolts, we yanked the casing only to find that it was securely wrapped around the axle of the front wheel, good god! that was a big waste of time.

to be continued...