Cooling issue

Hello Mazda community! Today I started having an issue with the cooling in my P5. I bought the car about a month ago, it's in fairly good condition minus normal old car stuff. (fluids, motor mounts, wheel bearings etc.) Along with an alternator that is starting to stuggle (I believe this is from the 1000 watt amp in the back). After I bought the car one of the first things I did was change engine fluids. This included an oil change and an antifreeze flush. I flushed the antifreeze untill it can out clear. After changing the fluids the car seemed much perkier and happier, untill today. On a commute around 45 mins ago I could smell a burnt antifreeze smell at some stop lights. Figuring that I had just changed the fluids I thought that somebody else must have a leak. When I arrived at my destination the little engine temp needle was right in the middle where it should be and I could still smell that burning antifreeze smell. So I popped the hood and took a look around. First thing I did was look in the over flow reservoir, it was a little merky but mostly clean and fresh looking. I grabbed a rag and slowly tried to take of the radiator cap to have about one table spoon of nasty muddy looking fluid come out before I closed it back up. I then decided to turn it back on and let it idle so the fans could cool it down. This is when I also noticed only the drivers side fan was working. After around 5 mins of idling I shut it off and took off the cap. It wasn't pressurized but the smell of burning fluid was immediately back and intense. The fluid was nasty and had coated the bottom of the cap in a creamy layer of rust. Does anybody have any ideas as to why it could be doing this? Could the therostat be bad? This is my first post, so any suggestions on improving my thread quality is also appreciated!

Rust? Where do you live did someone use water for a period of time as coolant?

The 2nd rad fan (pass side in USA) comes on when the A/C compressor is used.

My experience with a 150k mile Protege5 cooling fan: It worked fine when car was stationary, but as soon as car was traveling forward and wind pressing against fan, it was enough force to move the fan motor armature away from the motor brushes, thus opening the brush/armature connection, and failing while driving at speed.

CORPHISH has a good idea also on the coolant. Is there any brownish residue in the coolant tank or radiator? Use of plain water can cause internal radiator plugging up, or even cause the impeller on the water pump to disintegrate.

When you did the rad flush, was the car running and the heater on full?

Brown residue in the cooling system can be residual rust from long term lack of antifreeze, it can be motor oil from block/head crack/head gasket failure, it can even be ATF fluid from the transmission cooler lines on the radiator pushing ATF into radiator.

mazdadude said:

The 2nd rad fan (pass side in USA) comes on when the A/C compressor is used.

My experience with a 150k mile Protege5 cooling fan: It worked fine when car was stationary, but as soon as car was traveling forward and wind pressing against fan, it was enough force to move the fan motor armature away from the motor brushes, thus opening the brush/armature connection, and failing while driving at speed.

CORPHISH has a good idea also on the coolant. Is there any brownish residue in the coolant tank or radiator? Use of plain water can cause internal radiator plugging up, or even cause the impeller on the water pump to disintegrate.

When you did the rad flush, was the car running and the heater on full?

Brown residue in the cooling system can be residual rust from long term lack of antifreeze, it can be motor oil from block/head crack/head gasket failure, it can even be ATF fluid from the transmission cooler lines on the radiator pushing ATF into radiator.

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^^ knows what he is talking about

Not straight rust, but a rusty colored build up. When I flushed it before I completely took off the overflow reservoir because it had little flakes of something in it. Yes, there was a rusty brown residue from what I could see in the radiator and was all over inside the overflow reservoir. When I flushed it, I did 4 cycles through. Taking it off the jack stands and taking it for a 10-15 minute drive with the heat up all the way and the fans on blast for the first 3, and just letting the car idle for a little bit on the last cycle. When I was driving I drove untill I could feel hot air then 4 or 5 minutes more. When I drained the last cycle it wasn't clear, but it was really close. I also used distilled water in my flushes.

I'm in school right now, but I can add pictures in around an hour when I drove over to another school.

Also, yesterday before I started having issues, I took off that black fabric cover on the inside of the hood and cleaned up all of the oily dirt on the inside with some light dish soap and water. Nothing too crazy, but could that have anything to do with it?

Also, I live in the Salt Lake area, there is almost no chance it could have gone with straight water.