Mazda BT-50 2021 Problems

There’s a very simple check you can do to see whether the battery or the charging system (alternator, regulator and wiring) is at fault here. With the engine running, place the probes of a multi-meter (switched to measure voltage) on the relevant battery terminals. If you see a figure of anywhere between 13.2 and 14.7 volts, the charging system is doing its job. You might need to rev the engine slightly off idle to see these numbers, but the voltage going into the battery should be in that range.

At this point, the battery becomes the main suspect, and a worn out battery will often neither hold a charge nor accept one.

If we’re talking about the current model D-Max and BT-50, then yes, the entire driveline should be interchangeable. Under the skin, both the Mazda and Isuzu utes are the same vehicle. Car makers enter into joint ventures like the development of this pair of vehicles to keep costs down by sharing the expense of developing, engineering and testing parts like engines, transmissions and, of course, drive-shafts and CV joints.

While most joint ventures like this one will arrive at two vehicles with some visual differences and usually some details differences inside, when it comes to the oily bits, making specific driveline or suspension parts for one vehicle over the other is defeating the purpose of the joint venture in the first place.

It sounds awfully like the car has entered what’s called limp-home mode. As the name suggests, this allows the ute to run just enough to get you to a workshop without damaging anything else. Limp-home is usually associated with a problem in one of the car’s systems, whether that’s electronic, fuel-system, exhaust system (DPF) or a mechanical fault with the engine or transmission. It’s kind of a self-preservation function.

The good news is that you’re still well and truly overed by the factory warranty, so it’s back to the dealership for your BT-50. This is absolutely Mazda’s problem, not yours.

This is one of the problems with the way the prices of band-new vehicles are haggled over. Had there been just a simple checkout price (as there is with nearly everything else we buy) this confusion probably wouldn’t have crept in. I take that, having asked for the tray upgrade, you then paid attention only to the final price being offered by the dealer.

Regardless of whether the dealer is trying to stall you with talk of a two month wait is a side issue. And perhaps you can hold out and force the dealer to supply the vehicle as per your contract of sale. Then again, if the mistake was a genuine one by a member of the sales staff (who could conceivably lose their job over such a blunder) then what’s the moral solution? Perhaps there’s a compromise to be made by both parties. I can understand you not wanting to pay an extra $7000 for a different type of tray, but surely that’s not the best result for anybody. In an ideal world, perhaps one solution would be for the dealer to provide the tray at their cost price (so they don’t lose money on the deal) and you get a cheap(er) tray because you’re not paying retail. Yes, it’s complicated. But that’s what happens when commerce meets karma.