That’s funny, I was scoping out a car there online a few weeks back. They are sadly a 3 hour drive from me

What’s the error code for. Some body shops paint over a ground on the inside of the fender on Mazdas and that screws up the whole wiring system. Source, I work with the guy who made that a TSB

Oh I’ve heard hahaha, definitely not saying the n18 is good I’m just not sure if they had similar issues so just wanted to put out there what happened with mine in case that gen had some similarities

Different engine so not too sure, but my 2011 with 230k on it has gone through 3 high pressure fuel pumps, 2 low pressure fuel pumps, and the fuel pump relay (which is soldered into the passenger footwell fuse panel) desoldered itself once. So see where that relay is in that gen and check that, and test fuel pressure. First high pressure fuel pump went out at around that mileage. (To clarify I know it’s a different engine and it may not have the same issues but this is what mine did so may be a good thing to look into)

Different engine so not too sure, but my 2011 with 230k on it has gone through 3 high pressure fuel pumps, 2 low pressure fuel pumps, and the fuel pump relay (which is soldered into the passenger footwell fuse panel) desoldered itself once. So see where that relay is in that gen and check that, and test fuel pressure. First high pressure fuel pump went out at around that mileage. (To clarify I know it’s a different engine and it may not have the same issues but this is what mine did so may be a good thing to look into)

As far as removing the TCU, probably not the best idea. As someone else stated it’s connected to the CAN bus along with almost every other ecu in the vehicle. Each of those ECUs need to see a signal from the other ones in order to work properly. Removing that TCU will give you a network malfunction issue and will likely disable other things like the keyless entry, push to start, smart braking, LKA, and basically anything else running in that part of the CAN bus. Not sure if it would work but perhaps just wrapping the TCU in a emf shield or something (think tin foil hat) could keep you from receiving a slew of network codes and hindering the TCU from communicating to the network. Will it give you an error message because it can’t communicate? No clue.