I bought some Side Tonneau covers from a member on here. I’d read on here (and on other forums) that some people had experienced problems with fitting these successfully. The main issue was the nut fixing the tonneau bracket to the pre-existing bracket on the car couldn’t be tightened up enough to stop it moving.
Having removed the plastic cover over the seat belt housing, the pre-drilled existing bracket can be seen.
This is the bit that’s been catching people out. If you fix as per Mazda instructions (as illustrated in the photo below), no matter how much you tighten the anti-vibration nut underneath, the black metal tonneau bracket will NOT stop rattling. This makes it hard to fix the pop fastener reliably. Some people have “fixed” this by putting a washer between the two brackets. However, this can make the top of the tonneau bracket too high and not allow the plastic seat belt cover to resit properly. The fix for that is to take out the little foam pad but then you have a potential rattle and wear on the plastic.
IMHO, the problem is that the flanged hex bolt (I’m sure someone will tell me the proper name) is too big to fit. The angle of the flange will not let it sit deep enough into the existing bodywork bracket. You can test this by mounting the tonneau bracket, inserting the bolt with no nut. Pushing the bolt down with your finger as far as it will go, you can easily rattle the tonneau bracket.
So given that I don’t have a milling machine to alter the angle of the flange and didn’t fancy a long drive to get a slightly narrower bolt (and it was probably made the diameter it is for a reason) I decided to come at the problem from a different approach.
So it was out with a rat tail file and I enlarged the pre-drilled hole, taking care to keep it as round as possible AND constantly rechecking the bolt fitting. I used a vacuum hose next to it to stop all of the metal swarf from dropping straight into the seat belt winder positioned directly below. It worked really well with the tonneau bracket now easily firmly tightened against the bodywork bracket.
Cover replaced, the fixing nut is now firm with no rattles
Close up of single tonneau cover.
General shot of both covers.
The whole thing took about 30 minutes, most of which was the initial head scratching to work out how to tighten the bolt. I’m not sure I’d pay full price for a pair but second hand (in new condition) they were worth it I think.
Buy on MX5 Parts Link