I had my new Mazda CX-9 in for a repair to a wire harness. Scott Trail was my service consultant and as usual, he did an excellent job. I have less than 600 miles on the car and already I have had this $700 repair. I also somehow have a dent in the bottom of the drivers side front door that will need repair. I have no idea how the dent got there given where I park the car at work and at home but it is there nonetheless. I speculated that it could have happened at the Lee Johnson car wash just after I purchased the car. I told Scott that the second time I used the car wash it went thru the wash on a clunky basis but I did not check the car at the time to see if some damage had occurred during the washing. I did ask him if there had been any recent complaints about the car wash but he didn't know of any. The recent repair to the wire harness was as a result of a rodent somehow getting up into the engine compartment and nesting and literally eating the wiring. Scott said it has been a repair that he has processed several times and he explained it was in some part due to the "green" manufacturing requirements placed on the auto industry that somehow makes the smell of the wire harness similar to the smell of peanut butter.... which is what attracts a rodent. He said that an effective deterrent to this problem has been to place Clorox kitchen wipe sheets or clothes dryer softener sheets inside the engine compartment. He said the smell from these sheets keeps the rodents away. My wife Cathy hopes that this Mazda will not be one of those bad luck cars that haunts you. The first Mazda we ever owned was a mini-van we purchased from Lee Johnson several years ago. On our first family trip right after we bought the car we drove down to Sun River in central Oregon. On the way, the transmission blew out. We ended up in Hermiston Oregon for a couple of days while we waited for replacement parts and it completely screwed up our vacation. We ended up replacing the transmission in that car twice before it had been driven 10,000 miles. We also had some electrical problems with that Mazda too. We ended up trading it in on a Chevy Blazer that was a great car. I drive less than 6,000 miles per year and am hoping that this new Mazda turns out to be a good car that lasts me for a couple of years. Spending $50,000 for a new car doesn't usually lead to $700 electrical repairs and putting Clorox towels under your hood to prevent mice from eating your wiring harness within the first 500 miles of owning the car. Maybe I should have purchased a new Silverado instead. Time will tell. I like Scott a lot but I do not want to be a frequent visitor to the repair shop with my new Mazda CX-9. BTW, I live in a nice townhouse in Kirkland and I have never had a rodent issue there with any vehicle I have owned before. Cath drives a nice Chevy Equinox LTZ that she purchased at Lee Johnson in 2014. So far, that has been a great vehicle. She parks it right next to my Mazda every day and she has never had any rodent problems.
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