Hi Scotti

In January of 2025 I picked a used CX90 with 15 thousand mile. It had been declared a lemon after it had numerous breakdowns and the owner got fed up and sued the dealer. It had a branded title due to it being declared a lemon so I had to wait while it sat in my driveway for 3 months for the special New York Salvage title inspection appointment.

I was given a list of issues that had accumulated from the original owner. The problems were all electrical in nature. The tailgate would get stuck midway up. The back lights would flash on and off. The were all sorts of alarms and messages mostly about low voltage and battery problems. One message instructed the driver to drive the car to charge up the battery. I am not a mechanic by profession. I am an electrical engineer by trade but I have worked on cars all my life. So armed with my mighty Simpson 160 and my 1979 craftsman socket set I decided to try to figure out WTF was wrong with this car. The only service info available was on Mazda's service web sight which is pay as you go. I think $30 buys you 24 hours of access. So between January and March I would put in 2 hours each day after dinner. What I discovered was someone had jacked up the car in the wrong place by a plastic body panel and crunched a wiring harness. I painstakingly took the harness apart and spliced about 100 wires together that had been either severed or shorted. This in February in my driveway in New York. I also discovered that this had become the dealers parts car. The battery is buried behind the engine under covers and the windshield wiper tray. I felt the battery was loose and discovered a Sears Diehard battery from 2016 was in the car. It was the wrong size for the battery tray. Mazda was not very helpful on the battery. They wanted $400 for a new one and said it was a special DIN sized Enhanced Flooded Battery (EBL) that was not available aftermarket. I found and AGM group 35 battery fit like a glove and works just fine. There were numerous handles and spare tire accessories missing. I found all replacements on EBay.

Two more months go by and finally I got my inspection and a genuine New York State title with my name on it. In April I registered the car and started driving it to work. It drove like crap. The transmission kept shifting for no reason making the car shutter on the highway. Off the line it would jerk and vibrate. Not what you would expect from a luxury model. Then after some research I found there were a bunch of recalls and firmware changes that had accumulated from when the car was built in September of 2023 . They involved the body control and transmission modules. None of them had been done so I called Mazda and they arranged to have them done with a local dealer. I found out later Mazda was obligated to do these by government mandate since they involved possible safety issues. One was for the cruse control radar. It would lock onto a car in the adjacent lane and slam on the brakes at highway speeds. Another was a issue whereby turning on the heat would cause a seat belt fault light to come on. After they were all done it was like driving a new car. It performs wonderfully on the highway both in handling and ride. Smooth and no alarms. Well worth the wait but very frustrating.

So after all that I have a question. The brakes squeak. I mean really squeak loud at low speed. My wive hears it from inside the house. My neighbors hear it. I pulled the wheel off and inspected the pads. They are all wearing evenly and there is at least a 1/4 of an inch of pad left. What you would expect from a car a little over a year old. So far I have I greased the caliper guide pins. Mazda uses spring shims behind the brake pads so I cleaned them up and greased them as per Mazda online but still they squeak like mad. I noticed the pads don't have the hairpin springs that push the pads apart like on my Kias. It looks like there are no holes for them. . The brakes work fine. Any suggestions. Could it be the lack of those hairpin springs? Both front wheels squeak. I can live with it but it is a little annoying when the wife cringes and all the dogs in the neighborhood start barking when I come home from work.