Dissimilar Rear Strut Assemblies? Or, Optical Illusion?

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Guest2018

Does your 2016-2018 CX-9 have the same characteristic as seen in the photos below?

Been driving in the canyons having fun lately (pressing pretty firmly into the turns). Pulled into a gas station to fill up and decided to check the Rear Upper Mounts for each strut while the gas was flowing. What I found was interesting. It is either an imbalance of some weird kind in either the Right or Left rear strut assembly, or it is an optical illusion caused by the way the shrouds surrounding the struts have been cut and shaped by Mazda in production.

Just to be sure, take a close look at your Left and Right rear strut assemblies. This area is just inside the rear wheel well on both sides of the vehicle directly above both rear wheel tires. You will see both the Left and Right rear strut assemblies. Notice the Upper Mount on both the Left and Right rear sides. It is a metal component bolts attached that look like this:

Upper_Strut_Pic.png



Now, notice the two pics below:

Left Rear
IMG_0223.jpg


Right Rear
IMG_0224.jpg



If you were simply pumping gas and did not know any better while walking from side-to-side looking inside the wheel well of both these Left and Right rear areas, you might swear that one side of your CX-9 was higher than the other according to what you were seeing. One the Left rear side, you can barely see the Rear Upper Mount and its attached bolts. However, on the Right rear side, you can clearly see the exposed Rear Upper Mount along with its attached bolts. Both are firmly in place they way they should be.

At first glance, I thought somehow one side had been hyper-extended, or highly compressed near the upper mount area but was not sure which side was in error. What made things worse is that fact that measuring the distance between the top of each wheel and the wheel well itself, showed that both sides were the exact same height. So, I drove home - thinking my vehicle was somehow unbalanced in the rear.

I then took these two photos. That's when I noticed what appears to be a difference in the way the cloth shrouding is cut on both sides. They don't appear to be cut with exactly the same shape or geometry. The right side shroud looks like it has a deeper cut than the left side shroud, but just as a sanity check I thought I would bring this to your attention.

Who can confirm this on their 2016-2018 CX-9? If your focus was solely upon the hardware like mine was at the gas station, then you could easily mistake this for some kind of strut malfunction or something equally as strange. You would then step back, look at the vehicle from directly in the rear, measure the height between the top of each rear wheel and the bottom of the wheel well itself and conclude that you were either going crazy, or suffering some kind of optical illusion. You don't notice this until you can see BOTH struts at the exact same time which you cannot physically do while standing on one side or the other. In other words, you won't even think about an optical illusion until you can see side-by-side the same general area under each wheel well, which is what the photos do for you.

I hope this is an optimal illusion because I cannot find a measurable (physical) imbalance anywhere in the rear of the vehicle no matter what I use as objective offsetting measuring points form the vehicle to the ground. It is perfectly balanced no matter how I measure things. So, this has got to be caused by shroud cuts that are dissimilar, right?

Please tell me that you see the same thing in your 2016-2018 CX-9.
 
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My 2016 looks exactly like yours on both sides. For some reason the fender liner is designed differently.
Never would have noticed had you not pointed it out.

I do know they put a lot of effort into sound deadening and road noise isolation into this model. Perhaps it's on purpose? some sort of road noise resonance prevention?
I really have no idea, just spitballing.
 
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It's the gray shroud that covers the strut mount. One is cut higher than the other. Look at the pictures carefully and I hope that you know what I mean. I was looking at it and that is what I noticed. The one that is cut higher is the one where you can see the upper mount.
 
My 2016 looks exactly like yours on both sides. For some reason the fender liner is designed differently.
Never would have noticed had you not pointed it out.

I do know they put a lot of effort into sound deadening and road noise isolation into this model. Perhaps it's on purpose? some sort of road noise resonance prevention?
I really have no idea, just spitballing.

It's the gray shroud that covers the strut mount. One is cut higher than the other. Look at the pictures carefully and I hope that you know what I mean. I was looking at it and that is what I noticed. The one that is cut higher is the one where you can see the upper mount.



Yep, both of you guys confirm it for me. I would never have noticed it either had I not seen one set of nuts on the upper right mount clearly with the upper left side being barely visible. Funny how the mind can play trick on you. I swore initially that something went wrong while traversing the canyons last weekend out where I live. But, not until I put both pictures side-by-side did I notice the difference in the cuts.

As far as why - I have no idea off the top. There's got to be a reason for this and now I'm eager to find out. Maybe you are right - maybe it has something to do with their sound deadening strategy. But, why just one side and not the other? Very odd at first glance.

Looks like I've found my first CX-9 mystery case. It never fails. I always seem to find a mystery case with all my vehicles. Some oddball design that nobody on the surface can tell me the WHY behind until I call the OEM. LOL! Let's see how may dealers I have to plow throw until I find one with the correct answer. This could turn out to be hilarious, if no dealer can state the reasoning behind this.

Any CX-9 takers? I have no idea what this is or why they did it. Does this anomaly exist on other CX variants (CX-3, CX-5, etc.)?

Thanks for confirming guys.
 
Most likely is they made some space for the tank filler tube so they lowered the splash guard a bit...which is not required to be replicated on the right side.
 
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Most likely is they made some space for the tank filler tube so they lowered the splash guard a bit...which is not required to be replicated on the right side.

This was my first thought too. Probably wouldn't be too hard to pull an edge back and/or stick your phone's camera up there to confirm.
 
Another thing you could do is check the part pricing for the left and right wheelhouse liners. 10 bucks says they have different prices right vs left which is another indicator that one is cut or shaped differently than the other, other than the obvious shape of right vs left.
 
Most likely is they made some space for the tank filler tube so they lowered the splash guard a bit...which is not required to be replicated on the right side.

Hmmm. Now that you mention it - that does make some sense. There has to be a good reason for it somewhere in the design. Like you said, it is probably fuel tank related. I'll check it out at my next oil change when I have it up on the rack. I'll have a much better view from under there.
 
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