So my main roof drain seals are clear (used a trombone brush), and have silicon sealed the rear light clusters, aerial, but now water is coming into the boot through the three white bumper bracket clips on the side of the petrol filler.
Both driver’s carpets and passengers are bone dry (footwell and behind /underneath seats).
I’ve tried silicone sealing around the three bumper clips but somehow water still gets in if it rains. I’ve pinpointed it to the bumper clips by pouring a jug of water near the fuel filler, and can see the water coming in around the clips.
Is the bumper bracket clip leak a common issue? Does it mean I’ve got a sill drain or other type of drain blocked somewhere?
You are sure that the drain tube from the filler cavity is still correctly secured and undamaged?
If so then it sounds like the seals behind the white bumper slider have failed. Perhaps there has been a knock or something.
The only solution is to remove the bumper (see the Mellens Body Panels pdf) Fig 7 onwards, easy enough apart from the two captive (but might need a spanner) square nuts holding the splash shields to the bumper, and then remove the offending slider and replace the seals (I’d bodge it and use silicone instead) and refit everything.
I seem to remember (dimly from a few years ago) there are also one or two screws on the outside of the slider as well as the clips, possibly the same scenario as the scuttle grommet leaks…
Is there a good way of checking the filler cap drain tube without taking everything apart? What does it look like? Garden hose, plastic white, black rubber etc?
Just had a look with my phone’s torch/flash light and cant see a tube or anything, just a hole about a few cm deep. Maybe thats the issue?
If you have the soft top?? check the deck plates are nice and tightly screwed down. One of mine was slightly loos on one bolt and caused a slight drip into the boot.
I’m wondering if my car has been involved in a slight rear end battle at some point, as there’s these two large plastic/rubber grommet covers in the boot floor toward the number plate, that look like they have a bit of overspray on them. I guess that’s not a normal Mazda thing?
If you were able to see the three white plastic clips, you took off most of the inside trim The weird shaped piece of steel backing on to the seats covers the two metal fuel pipes, and a bit or ordinary black rubber drain pipe. Heres a pic from when I installed parking sensors. It’s on the left of the three pipes. You can see two of the three white pegs further left.
