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She's Takin' On Water Captain
Once again, after a period of reasonably reliable running, the MX-5 throws another wobbler. In this case the passenger footwell became the recipient of a bucket load of water. Initially I put it down to maybe leaving a window open or something like that... So mopped it out, dried all the carpet, job done.
Or so I thought when it happened again. I went through all the seals on the roof and A pillar, bit of gunk in there, maybe that was it. Dried it all out again. Job done? Nope, another deluge, another floor mat dripping in water.
Time to get the hose out and sit in the car until we can find where it's coming in. Amazingly eventually a nice little stream of water starts dribbling down from behind the glove box!
Turns out it's one of them there features. You know, like if you don't keep the drains clear on a Mk2 they fill up the sills and they rot from the inside out. Turns out this is a special feature of the Mk3 and it's lurking underneath this little cap below.
What we have here is a bit of plastic trim that bolts to the car using a bolt under that cap that goes into a plastic captive nut. That nut has a rubber seal on it. That seal perishes over time and falls to bits (indeed you can see bits of it just to the left of it on the picture below). It's all a bit manky. But under that nut is a channel that goes behind the glove box... Great design there Mazda!
A good indication that this is a fairly common problem is that MX5PARTS have a 'MX5 Windscreen Cowl Grille Water Leak Repair Kit' (just search for that on Ebay, it's 8UKP and does both sides, though I've only done the one leaking and kept the other for if either go again). 650 sold, that's a lot of damp mats!
Here it is all fitted and cleaned up. I don't see why it wouldn't fix the problem, time will tell of course. Fingers crossed that this is finally job done!
