I’ve been meaning to post this for ages now but have never got round to it.
I’m the proud owner of a 62 plate MK3.5 hard top.
I love the car, but the only thing i don’t like at the moment is that I can hear a high pitched whistling/howling noise in my left ear if i’m driving with the roof up and going above approx 35mph.
The sound seems to get louder as i drive faster. I had it up to 60 and it was very loud. The sound doesn’t seem to be there with the roof down, but with all the ambinet noise I can’t be sure.
At this stage i’m not sure if there’s a gap that is letting air in as i drive, thus causing the noise, or could it be tyre noise?
I really don’t know. I’ve had a read through the recent thread on this sub-section also about the MK3 folding roof too.
I’ll try and get an audio recording of the noise if possible so that I can link to it on Youtube.
Your description as “high pitched whistling/howling” brings back memories of the Great Storm of 1987, so my betting is wind noise caused by a bad seal or gap somewhere.
Try getting a roll of wide masking tape and systematically cover the gaps between panels/hood etc. Blank off one seam at a time and go for a drive and eventually you should find the offending ‘gap’.
So I carefully washed out all the seals, I noticed the water collection seal around the back of the rear window on the passenger side was a lot dirtier/dustier than on the driver’s side. That might have been due to parking and road camber, or it might have been due to he deck plate not seating quite as closely on that side, but this is just speculation.
So I then went around all of the rubber seals on roof and doors with Gummi Pfledge, twice. I let it dry off each time before re-application or thinking about closing the roof again.
It no longer has the whistle/howl, and as a side bonus the roof no longer creaks anything like so much - increasing creaks are a cue for a re-application.
I now re-do the Gummi Pfledge each time I have a good fettling session.
There are other effective solutions, some people use silicon oil/grease or other branded products. The Gummi works for me.
The important thing is to keep the rubber clean, supple and soft.
Check for a gap where the top of the rear screen section meets the surround with the roof closed. I’ve known that to cause a wind noise before now. IIRC, there is a small amount of adjustment in the screen section.
HI read something on this a while ago but for the life of me can’t remember where, what somebody thought was the roof whistling was actually some missing sealant on the door. Apparently on the NC where the door skin folds over the door just in front of the mirror the factory sealant does not quite run to the edge of the door. If you run your finger underneath the small lip you can feel the runout of the sealant and this causes a whistling noise. I think you can run a small bead in quite easily and it will cure the noise.
If I remember rightly there is a Mazda service bulletin on it.
