First time post on this forum, wanted to share my store on my 11 plate Mazda 6 2.2 Diesel Sport.
Please forgive me for my lack of technical knowledge - I have absolutely no technical knowledge on cars - the information I have below is what I have in writing from my garage.
I had exactly the same problem as outlined above.
About a month ago the oil pressure light flickered for a split second on my way to work but stayed off. On my way back home in the evening, not 2 miles out the flickering resumed and stayed on. I pulled over immediately and called the RAC to haul me to Colliers which was not far away.
They found after investigating that the strainer was blocked by carbon swarf. They took the sump, oil pump and strainer off which they cleaned, refitted the oil pump, strainer and sump again. Refilled with oil and reset the oil data.
The reason they gave me: "The reason for the oil strainers to block on this type of engine/vehicles, is due to a leaking injector washer, the blow-by gas amount increases excessively,
causing carbon formation on the oil strainer." ... "This fault can happen on this type of vehicle and the causal part at fault is the injector washers and not just natural carbon build up due to mileage/age etc."
The injector seals were replaced at my 75k service, which was 1k miles before this happened. The total bill for the work (4 man hours they charged me + some parts): 509 quid.
This week Tuesday, one month and 4 days after the first problem, it happened AGAIN. Cleaned the strainer again and they gave me 50% of goodwill on the invoice (200 total this time) because it happened again so soon. Their explanation was, this is probably left over carbon swarf, not new deposits, from deeper inside the engine that got loose and blocked the strainer again.
They also agreed to check the strainer again in one months time free of charge to see if it's getting clogged again or not.
I then asked them why they couldn't clean it properly after which they explained they could not do this without taking the whole engine apart which will of course cost a whole lot more. They never presented this option to me in the first place, they are happy to have repeat business of course!
I have a few longer trips coming up with the car, expecting to be doing between 1500-2000 miles this month, I hope it doesn't break down on me again and the next check will show the strainer to be completely clean but I've not been very lucky with it so far so not getting my hopes up.