Do you park your cars under trees or any other areas where your car is subjected to a lot of organic detritus etc? My car, a soft top ND gets regularly covered in bits of moss that birds throw about whilst searching for insects in our roof gutters etc, especially at this time of year. It does tend to congregate around the edge of the hood where it would eventually be washed down to the drains if I did not regularly remove it. Admittedly the drains are a very poor convoluted design on the RF but I cannot see Mazda covering the cost of cleaning the drainage system more than once under warranty.
I know it is not very convenient but a possible solution may be to buy a complete car cover to use whenever your car is parked at wherever you think that the majority of the detritus that is getting into your cars roof drains originates. The only other solution is to buy a soft top . This is unless Mazda redesign the drains and either replace them under warranty or charge you if not. Not much chance of that though!
Wow. Now I understand what I was told about knowing when the carpet was wet ! Mine didn’t feel particularly damp but did mist the whole car. That is a wet carpet.
So I have solved my water ingress for now, I cut out some car wash sponge (that easily lets water through it) into an oblong that fits into and fully fills the window drain cup on each side. Note that the cup is bigger than the hole and has 2 entrances (either side of the lid seal). This stops the dirt and debris entering the tube system.
If the sponge clogs or is overwhelmed, then water just runs over the roof cover panel and off the car. This has worked for many months now, so confident it’s an improvement.
Yes I used some small pieces of coarsest aquarium filter foam to do the same job. Have to pull them out and clean every few car washes. Seems to work except one disappeared somehow!
You still need to vacuum the rear shelf to get rid of any detritus of open top motoring there that could work round to the drain gratings.
That black pipe just looks too long, a design error?
If the orange was tilted more upwards and closer to the white bit, then a much shorter black bit with a gentler bend would have sufficed, almost like in the NC.
I wonder if they already had the black pipe as a stock part for something else?
I know this is more than a year old, but this sounds like an opportunity for a 3D printing expert to make a killing. Is there such a thing out there now?
Richard FX, I agree its not well designed, it’s quite a complex union between the black and white pipe (they couldn’t make it easy). The big issue to change it is the black pipe goes through the roof compartment floor and joins onto the reservoir (pic3), which you could only removed by taking out the entire roof mechanism and seat belts. Doesn’t seem worth the effort, as it’s not the bit that causes most of the issues.
The 3 main problem parts are:
The flap valve, below in the reservoir, which is a duck bill type (as far as I can see) and sticks together and stops water egress.
The flap valve in the orange final pipe, which sticks, either shut and stops water egress, or open and causes high road noise.
The reservoir which has a grill and gets easily blocked by debris, that lands in the roof compartment and is difficult to see and clean
The Window cups that have no protect from debris, causing blocked pipes, valves and grills throughout the system.
Is hard to see how they could think of design, that is more likely to fail in normal service, and be almost impossible to maintain or repair!
