My current Protege ES is my second Protege as my first one was a '92 DX manual transmission and a jewel of a car. It was going strong at 200,000 miles on the odometer when I sold it.
I am experiencing my first problem with my ES at 110,000 miles. The CHECK ENGINE LIGHT came on recently with a DTC P0420 (catalyst efficiency below threshold-bank 1). I reset the indicator and the CEL has not come on again, but the engine now, randomly, will "stumble" (my descriptor) at moderate speeds, that is, it will abruptly jerk with a down-shift from 4th to 3rd gear and back to 4th. I have no way of knowing if the engine causes the shifts or the transmission is acting on its own. "7th Apr 2005" also owns an ES and appears to have my exact problem.
Has any Protege owner experiencing this problem resolved it? I'd love to hear that somebody has a fix for it.
Generally, my ES has been another superb transportation car from Mazda. It handles well, gives good gas mileage (30 mpg average) and has been trouble-free until my current problem.
This should be considered an addendum to my review of Nov. 1,2005 which was, for some reason, listed as a 1998 ES vice the correct 1999 ES.
It appears that I have resolved my '99 Mazda Protege's problem of improper shifts. A bit of reading indicated that modern a transmissions can be "adaptive" automatic transmissions, that is, the transmission "learns" and adapts to operating requirements. i.e. the transmission is closely controlled by computer parameters stored by itself.
It seemed logical to assume that this stored info. could become corrupted (as any computerphile can attest to) and cause some strange happenings.
Assuming that my car had this feature, too, I found that if I disconnected my car's battery ground terminal for 10 minutes it "cleared" the stored transmission data. You will have no doubt when this happens as the next time that you drive the car it will make inappropriate shifts galore. In fact, I questioned whether or not I had gone from the frying pan to the fire!
But, then the sun shines! After driving about 100 miles that day, the next day when I drove the car it was magic! The transmission was silky smooth. It appears that I do have the adaptive transmission and that after clearing the transmission memory it takes a while before the adaptive feature takes over again.
This is my experience and use it for what it's worth to you.
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