Hi everyone,

As we are all aware the FC is notorious for interior that breaks over time and starts to creak.

1/2 My first is is the creaking coming from the Instrument Garnish Panel. Has anyone ever replaced the clips underneath and has that worked for you? It seems that it never seems to sit in place and creaks with road vibrations. I'm using the LBR Defroster Vents since the original plastic vents broke many years ago.
LRB Defroster Vents

2/2 For the speaker and speaker covers. When any song has a significant amount of bass the whole strut tower rattles. Has anyone done anything to remedy the vibrations?

 

Regarding the second point you bring up, what you can do for the strut towers is put something in between the plastic covers mounting hole and the tower itself. I tested this once (back when my FC was assembled, a state to which I hope to return it soon). Basically, take a thin piece of felt (or something similarly soft and pliable), cut it in the shape of a little washer, and poke a hole in the middle the same diameter as the screw. Then, when assembling, slip it between the plastic cover and the strut tower itself and screw through it. This way when the screw is tightened down, the cover is 'floating' and is insulated from the vibrations. This goes without saying, but be super careful when disassembling/assembling any of our fragile interior parts.

Eventually I just moved to boxed speakers in the back anyways, so the point became moot. But it worked for me.

 

On the first one -- my clock/lights cluster panel creaks, especially on sunny days, which is most days..... LRB makes a replacement panel, but I don't plan to replace it until it cracks.
On the second one -- I did something similar to what WondrousBread suggested, except that my felt insulates the entire speaker mount. I'll take a picture if I can find it.

 

I foresee that a lot of smart, clever people will chime in with fixes for the problem.
It's kinda sad that the fact is, the plastic Mazda used is just long past it's sell by date and is returning to base elements.
Put simply, the dash is just falling apart and there's little you can do about.

I assume the original is molded from some sort of ur-ABS but it doesn't actually matter...look at new dashes- they're made from a sort of nylon and are way more flexible.
And Mazda designed the most failure prone mounting points I can imagine. It's almost as if they were daring you to disassemble the dash without breaking it.

The rest of the interior is not so bad (once you know where all the blind mounting clips are) but the dash is an unmitigated disaster.

 

So fortunately my dash isn't cracked and doesn't rattle what so ever. it's just that top bezel that covers the defroster vents that creaks.

 

And that is probably the best example of the terrible mounting points that Mazda designed.
For some reason there are metal mount clips snapping into plastic tabs that are cantilevered off the main structure.
You could hardly design a more failure prone set up.