I have a 2005 Mazda 3i - 2.0L. Nothing special. Your typical stock car.
I just replaced the original battery today, and now my car stalls when coming to a stop. Has never done this before. WTH!? Took back to auto store to check battery. Battery & alternator are fine.
Any issues with reset after replacing battery? Help!
Wow, our cars must be freakin' twins. Same symptoms, started the same way.
My 2005 3s had a suspect battery so I went to AutoZone to have it tested yesterday (10/11). Under load the old unit put out 280A so time for a new one as this one is 1 mo. shy of 5 yrs. Put the Duralast Gold unit in there, drove it home. I pulled the battery when at home to clean out the battery container box (the crummy OE Panasonic unit once had some battery fluid spill over, crudded up the bolts underneath). Slathered silicone grease on the connectors, re-installed the battery and drove it around last night with no issues I detected, but my wife (who was driving it really) said she once felt a stumble. I never felt it. Note the car was warmed up when we took it out last night.
Today the wife takes it out, drove it from a cold start and last evening the temps dropped about 20F from the evening before. About 3 mi. from the house she calls in a panic that the car had stalled out but cranked just fine. She also told me that the trip odo hadn't reset nor had the clock/radio presets. Tell her to tool it back to A/Z to have the battery checked. Pegs their tester at 650A, no issue with battery. Guy checks the battery cable connections, tight as they should be. Put the alternator under load, tested okay he says. Then he checked for any codes in the ECM, nada. He thought maybe the ECM was relearning, didn't know what else could be wrong. Suggested gas may be bad, but the car has been running on the same tank for 250 mi. so far with no issues until the battery was replaced.
She drove it more, never stalled but did act flakey when coming to a stop at traffic lights. She said the RPMs would go to nearly 1000, drop to 500, then bump to normal as she's coming to a stop. Car also once on the several errand stops she made took 2 cranks to get it to start, something never happened before.
I call the service guy at the dealership, describe to him what happened. This fellow has never steered me wrong, immediately said it was the ECM re-learning, not to worry for a day or two. He seemed sure it was ECM relearning from his tone, something I'd not heard him be so sure of before (guy is at Capital Mazda in Cary, NC). It almost sounded like this is common with Mazdas from his tone.
This car had the new ECM firmware flashed in July 2008, so I think that's the latest rev and it addressed these exact problems (had the same issues with the car until the reprogram). I had similar issue, sans the 2 time starting problem, years ago but it was pretty consistent. The re-flash cured it back then, never had the issues since. My wife also tried cranking it after it had sat an hour in the garage after she got home; fired up like normal. She also tried after a 2 hr. sit, fired immediately, drove it a few blocks but no more stalling/weirdness. She said it acted like "problem? what problem?". It was as if nothing had ever been off kilter.
I tried cranking the car in the garage earlier, car had been sitting for 4 hrs., cranked fast as can be. I noted it had 60 mi. on the odo since I pulled the battery yesterday, and I've hear some cars can take up to 100 mi. to completely re-learn or 10-12 cranks. I'm keeping an eye on it but this is really weird and seems suspicious it happened as soon as I pulled that battery and the car sat easily 30 min. with it out. We'll see how it acts tomorrow morning.
