my mazda has a blinking chek engine light, the TCS light is on, and the DCS light is blinking "OFF". last night, i did unhook the battery and remove the radio. ive made sure the battery was connected good, and it is.

i know it cant be a result of me messing with the radio bcuz it had this same problem for about five minutes while i was on te road last night before i messed with the radio.

anyways, the car def doesnt sound like its running well. i can literally press the gas pedal to the floor and i can count the many seconds it takes for the engine to recognize that im pressing the pedal. when i do press down on the pedal, it kinda sounds like i have a deep sounding flowmaster exhaust combined with an engine that doesnt want to run.

just looking for possible explinations as to what it going on.

 

A blinking CEL/MIL light is caused by a miss fire. The cause can be something in the ignition system or too much back pressure from a bad cat converter.

Update: On a older car, replace the coils, wires and plugs. If these are bad, it can lead to damage of the cat.

 

the engine was replaced by mazda about 20k miles ago. and i was thinking if the cat was bad, wouldnt it be smelling terribly? i do notice a slight odor, but it is very slight and doesnt really smell like the infamous "rotten eggs"

 

The ignition system is NOT replaced when the engine is swapped. The "rotten egg" smell is caused by the brand/octane of gas (http://www.newsday.com/classifieds/c...tane-1.1349223). An open cat will accentuate the smell of the alcohol in the gas. A clogged cat will increase back pressure to the engine causing low performance and I believe it caused oil to show up in the intake of my engine.

 

And..........to cure the TCS/DCS...............turn the key to "on" but do not start.
Turn the wheel all the way to the right and then the left.
Turn key "off", wait 5 seconds and then start as normal.
You need to do this every single time you unhook the battery.

As for your other issue(s) see above! But I think it's your CAT. Better do one of two things...............
1.) after a drive see if it's glowing red.
2.) Take it loose at the front and peer in with a flashlight to see if honeycomb is all falling apart.

Of course it could always be bad plugs/coils as well. When was last time they were replaced?

 

i figured the TCS and DSC lights were cuz i unhooked the battery. thanks for the info, ill try reseting that later.

this is prolly a dumb question, but please dont flame me for it, would replacing the CAT require any welding? if not, i would just like to do it myself (assuming that is determined to be the problem).

the spark plugs were replaced when we got the new engine around 20k miles ago. the car has been to a local mechanic several times lately due to unrelated issues and he doesnt think they should be changed yet.

 

We haven't flamed you yet have we. Your present questions are ones that can already be found on this site.
You didn't say how many total miles are on the car. The cat has a U.S. emissions warranty of 8 yrs/80K miles. It would be a bolt in replacement.
If you are beyond that, you can get either another oem cat (expensive) or an aftermarket hi flow cat that will bolt right in. If you are not in an area the requires emissions testing, you can get a resonated midpipe (without cat) and not have to worry about that again.

 

the car has something like 110k on it. i was looking at CAT exhaust systems on SR Motorsports bcuz i really do not want to go to the dealership for this.

im almost positive that KY doesnt require emissions testing, they use to. so i could go with a midpipe, assuming that the CAT is actually at fault here

EDIT: took the car for a little drive. drove around in the neighborhood a bit and it started smokin and smellin really bad. pulled in the driveway, looked under the car, and sure enough, somethin was glowing red underneath. i can only assume that means that CAT is pretty much done for?

 

Your cat is dead. Dig a hole in the back yard and bury it.