Bought an IL Motorsport strut brace for my new ND, thought it was going to be easy having looked at the instructions before purchase. All went well, fitted new centre mounting bracket, removed offside strut bracket and fitted new alloy one, a bit fiddly but ok, now to the nearside and now a problem. Can`t remove the old bracket because there is no movement in the (this is where I show my ignorance) what I believe is the pcm/iloop, fitting. I need to get it over the two bolts that hold it in place, anyone had experience of it, how to disconnect it etc.
I`ve searched for workshop manual but to no avail.
The bolts marked green I have to get over, it looks if I can remove the cable marked red I would be able lift the unit.
The PCM cover is secured with shear-off bolts for security reasons, so by design it’s not easy to unplug the harness or remove the PCM. I believe that in Germany they do not use shear-off bolts so maybe it’s not a problem for them (look at the PCM in their photo on the website, no PCM cover fitted). It’ll maybe be a case of trial and error until you can “wangle” the PCM bracket out of the way. If you do end up having to drill the shear-off bolts out, get a price for replacements first.
Got there in the end,
cut the orange bolt down, loosened 3 bolts marked in red enough to put some play in the pcm bracket and with a bit of wriggling and a lot of cussing managed to extricate the mazda mounting bracket.
fitting the new alloy strut bracket was relatively easy, would have liked a better fitting bracket that looked like it was meant for the car, the holes in the bracket on the pcm are 6mm, the holes in the new strut bracket are a lot larger, I chose to use 6mm bolts with large washers underneath, not ideal I may revisit and drill the holes in the bracket to match. Also the motorsport bracket mounting holes are angled whereas the pcm bracket is flat.
One final gripe the instructions state to use the “supplied screws to fixate the pcm sensor”, they were missing.
It is now fitted, bearing in mind the cost, some struts can be had for less than £50, there should not have been cause for the gripes, phew that`s over………………
thanks to all for the input