After the brutal winter, the roads here in NH are crap. Every time I hit a crack or a patch, the car sounds like I dropped a bag of wrenches. It's a 1989 convertible. Does anybody have any thoughts on how to calm down the cowl shake? Mazdatrix used to have a triangle shaped strut tower brace. Would that help? Where can I get one?

It really takes a lot of the fun out of the car.

Doug

 

I'd look into getting as much reinforcement as possible. I once saw someone put additional bracing under the fender cover just forward of the door that looks pretty cool.

 

how old are your shocks/suspension bushings?

 

And pull the rear cover and make sure spare and all the other parts under there are not loose.

I had a few rattles from loose bolts that I fixed.

 

Welcome to the life of owning an old car. Bits of the interior that have cracked or broken in places that you cannot see are usually the culprit. I bet if you pulled your defroster grille at the base of the windshield, you'd find that the top anchors of the dash probably cracked or are broken in places. The actual defroster grilles themselves are likely broken and they rattle a good bit.. and hey, that whole piece that they sit in rattles when the felt buffers wear out and fall away. The door panels are usually pretty rattle free on these cars.

The idiot light bezel will rattle... the switches in the instrument surround will rattle... shall I go on ?

Buy some sticky felt pads and go nuts.

 

I have done sticky felt pads ...