I have decided to put this on here because the Mazda forum is so utterly garbage and I have never had a single response to any of my questions. My car is used almost entirely for bike transportation purposes so I believe its relevant enough.

I also know that you lot are far brighter than any of those petrol head monkeys….so here goes

****2005 Mazda 6 Diesel estate 2L, 130,000m ******

I finally got my car back together yesterday having changed out some broken rockers after a Cam belt failure. The car was essentially scrap so I figured I couldn’t make it any worse by having a go. Quite unbelievably the engine started first time and runs smoothly.

Slightly annoyingly there is a grinding sound coming from the power steering assembly – which gets louder and more pronounced when I turn the wheels (Steering seems to work fine). I am worried because I had to remove this assembly to get to the rocker shaft; including removing the Vacuum pump, housings. and drive cog all the way back to the crank shaft.

The sounds worryingly like cogs grinding but I just cant see how I could have screwed this bit up!

The transmission fluid is well below the minimum level (just above the bottom of the reservoir). I’m not sure why as I don’t think I interfered with that system. The fluid also has air in it as bubbles appear in the reservoir after turning the wheels.

Clearly I need to top up the fluid and do a few full locks to remove the air but I’m worried that this could be a red herring; and I don’t want to continue to grind up my gears if their is in fact another problem.

So – can low levels of steering fluid create a grinding noise??

Also – will I be OK to top up the reservoir with Castrol ATF Dex II Multivehicle?

this is what the shop manual says but I dont want to mix incomparable fluids. The fluid currently in there looks clear or maybe greenish – what color is the Dex?

Is it OK to top up or should I replace all the fluid – it looks to be in good condition.

we had a similar noise on our old almera. the belt snapped so the RAC man came out and said he could fix it which he did. after replacing the belt i noticed that when the steering was on full lock there would be a loud screeching/grinding noise coming from the pulleys and steering pump. after another visit from the RAC it turned out he had used the wrong belt and as a result of it being shorter than the original had to wind it on adding too much tension. to counter this he had would off the tension on another pulley. the new RAC man took about 45 minutes to put things right with the correct belt as opposed to the 2 hours it took for the original repair. sounds like yours could be suffering similar issues OP

Bubbles in the fluid might sound like grinding, I dunno. Possible? As for the fluid, AFAIK most PS fluid is mineral oil so will be mixable with other mineral oils, but I am not an expert in this. However:

I finally got my car back together yesterday having changed out some broken rockers after a Cam belt failure.

Excellent work!

If your oil level is low and it’s bubbling up and aerating the oil, that’ll cause a bit of noise.

Best plan is to top the oil up and go from there.

Well that’s instantly more useful, thanks people.

It turns out fixing cars is a lot harder/ dirtier/ more frustrating/ more awkward and vastly more time consuming than fixing bikes! I have learned tons though – never even taken a wheel off when I started. The Mrs is less than happy about all this though- lol.

Hopefully I can it going before our Megavelanche trip on Saturday. It will be a huge risk to take it though even if I sort out this problem. The alternative is squeezing 3 people int my friends 2.5 seater van – which he is less than happy about.

Impressed that you fixed an engine as a novice. Figuring out big stuff like this is fantastically rewarding 🙂

beginners luck!
Also I haven’t actually driven it anywhere yet 😕

Well done so far.
I suspect the PS fluid being low is the source of the noise. Check you’ve got the right PS fluid, some GM / Fords use different specs from the normal fluid.

Get the correct fluid – green could be pentosin ch11s or similar – it should say on the filler cap – do not ever trust haynes manual about what fluids to use in any kind of gearbox or power steering fluid.
If you lost fluid when you did the job – it will need topping up!

I have been using the workshop manual – can I trust this over Haynes?
It says…..

ATF M-III or equivalent (e.g. Dexron®II)

Can’t remember seeing anything on the filler cap but will check