So today the monsoon skies finally cleared and I got back to putting the 3 back together. The screw in the blower housing that I thought looked impossible was, but I got the other two back in, so at some point the concept of "good enough" comes into play.
The good news is that after vaccuming, new filters and resistor everything works. So I've started putting trim pieces back on.
Something will have to be done, though, with the fresh air path through the cowl, etc. to prevent a recurrance of the mouse problem. I pulled off the wipers and all the cowl pieces and was amazed (not pleasantly) with the design of it all.
Mazda did nearly everything short of providing free taxi service to make it easy for mice to get into the heater internals. The cowl grille and drain trays look nearly impossible to do anything with. A ray of hope is the hole in the firewall sheet metal. It has some formed edges that look like there might have been some kind of plan for a filter or mesh bonnet to snap
onto it that got forgotten in the rush to production. Anyone know of such a thing?
It's a job for another day, but my inventive mind is turning over ideas that may include hardware cloth, epoxy, brass rod, solder and sheet metal screws.
I think I can fix it, but it sucks that Mazda didn't deal with it up front. I vote for a big black mark against the HVAC design team on this one.
- Rick in soggy NW Ohio