Mine fit alright without too much custom fitting. There is a small gap between it and the gauge face, but that's 100% due to the age of my gauge face and the failing mounts on it for the hood...would be the case with an OEM mazda hood too.

As far as UV thats a very valid concern, but I painted mine with interior black paint that matches as close as I could find with the rest of the car so I can't speak to that.

If you're going to use the OEM attachment method of the spring clips you'll want to reinforce them. At least on mine the mounts were just small diameter, tall cylinders that were totally unsupported. Even drilling them to accept trim screws was a delicate process.

I think I mentioned it before but I know I saw a thread on here a while ago where someone used strong neodymium magnets to attach the hood instead of the spring clips. I think that might offer a more elegant solution thats less likely to cause any breakage when removing later on. Its on my list of things to look into next time I have to remove my gauge hood for something.

 

Haha, worth looking into. Would the magnets make the gauges go wonky?

 

Shouldn't be close enough to the gauges to matter. The hood attached to the gauge face with trim screws. The primary failure point for the hood is where it connects to the dash via spring clips.