Mazda 5 Side Skirt - is this fixable DIY?

Hi there,

I have a Mazda 5, 2006, that my wife drove into some protruding re-bar (she actually did, this is not me blaming her for my bad driving). The side skirt has come about half way off, with out six or seven of the mounting clips (I think those were the mounting clips) appear to have been snapped off. I have tried looking in other threads, but have not found anything this specific (but honestly I am not at all car knowledgeable, it took me two hours online just to find out the side skirt / mounting clip information). Do I have to take this to the dealer and pay for the whole new side skirt (hopefully not), or do I just have to get some of the clips, somehow take the skirt off, replace and reattach? We are not going to drive this past next year, as the car is too old to have any value here in Japan (anything after ten years gets way to expensive car tax wise). Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I can post more pictures soon, just the one for now.

Well, you can't fix that easily as she ripped off the mounting points.
Best advise, if you can remove the whole skirt, wash both surfaces, car and skirt, and re-attach with double sided tape that you can find in automotive store.
That will hold stronger then with clips, but also do re-use the left over unbroken clips.

WORD OF ADVICE – Take that skirt off NOW and set it aside!


You just summarized my exact situation except it was high curb. Granted I don’t know how many clip “mounts” actual broke in your case but the fact that you can pull the skirt back to reveal the one broken mount leads me to believe the next two closes and possible one underneath is also broken (or hanging on a limb). For me, it started similar to you except I couldn’t peel as far back as you. I figure the other clips should hold it but that was a mistake (that was +1 years ago ). Without all mounts to securely hold it stead, the loose and rattling skirt move too much as highway speeds where air pressure forces will cause the weak mounts to break. I waited too long and it got worst (now I can pull it off). The skirt comes off pretty easily. Screws in the front and rear (I think). Pop off the remainder of the horizontal clips. There are 3(?) large fasteners underneath where you SLIDE the skirt off.

Technically you need to buy a new skirt, aftermarket can be cheaper. If you are handy, it’s nothing epoxy can’t fix. IF I ever get to it (prob when I sell the car), I plan to double it up with German glue that I got from a trade show + epoxy = stronger than original 

Thanks for the advice Vasy and Silent,

I have put a few more pictures on the original post. As you can see it is really coming off. Five or six of the mounting points have broken completely. I guess I better get on this before we have to go on the express way and tear the rest of them off. Then I need to head to the car parts store and see if the clerks can find what I need. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I guess I should buy some more mounting clips as many other threads have said they break sometimes when taking off the side skirt.

Are you good at soldering?

If you have electronics soldering experience, then you can also reattach the clips by plastic soldering. I use my electric pencil soldering iron (40 Watt) to fix HDPE plastics with good results. Since the failure is on the back side, then you won't care about the finished look.

In my experience, plastic milk jugs cut into strips are great for HDPE plastic fillers. This guy uses a zip tie as filler for a door handle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26Vqo57CdFc

i'm not sure what kind of plastic the skirt is made of, but there should be a stamp on it somewhere with a symbol to tell you. Then all you do it find some scrap filler material to match.

I considered plastic welding (never tried it) but my limited knowledge on this was more about fusing two plastic surfaces together where you had to melt/soften two surfaces to fuse together. The mounts broke on the seam right against the inside of the side skirt. The plastic is too thin on the backside of the skirt so there’s no place where you can melt to re-attach; otherwise, you risk ruining the plastic on the outer surface. The vid looks more like hot plastic gluing, no? Perhaps this may work but I’m not so sure how strong it will be. The skirt/mounts take on a lot of stress.