Rear Seat Back Clunk from Top Tether Fix

yuh

Member
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CX-5
Wanted to share my experience with eliminating some of the cabin rattles/clunks/etc in the 2015 CX-5. Bought this CPO at a little over 30k miles a few months ago and after a bit of driving I found some unsettling noises in the cabin. My sister owns the 2016 and I've never experienced these noises. Obviously they drove me mad and I spent months studying the sounds and looking for the sources.

The first sound was a rattle. It was a common one: the rear spoiler wings/inserts. I brought the car to the dealership and they tightened it up and they added some foam tape. Discussion can be found here: https://www.mazdas247.com/forum/showthread.php?123842919-Rattle-noise-coming-from-rear-hatch-SOLVED

After fixing the rattle, much of the noise over lighter bumps were gone... but soon I noticed another sound. This time, when going over harder bumps. It was a quick clunk sound rather than a rattle. It sounded as if the cargo floor was lifting up and slamming down while going over bumps. Quickly figured out that wasn't the issue.

The real problem was from the baby seat tether behind the rear seats. It is very easy to test if you have the issue and just as easy to fix.

Test if you have it

- Drop all 3 rear seats down and locate the tethers behind them
- Tap on the picture of the baby
- If it makes a loud sound, you have the problem
- If it sounds dampened, you probably don't have the problem

I only had the problem with my center seat tether.

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The fix

See images below for reference:

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What I did was cut a piece of foam tape long enough so that I could shove it under the top half of the plastic piece (under the baby picture). Then, I took off the back of the tape to reveal the sticky part but only for the bottom part of the piece of tape and stuck it on (the part of the tape you can see in the photos). I don't have a baby so I'm not sure how much this affects the usability of the tether. If usability becomes an issue, cut the piece of tape that is revealing in the pic and just stick the foam tape under the picture of the baby. You just need something to dampen that plastic piece when being pushed down.

That's it. Clunk is gone. I didn't see much discussion on this aside from maybe a single post buried in a rattle thread that went nowhere so I hope this helps some people out there!
 
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