My driver's side carpet was awfully wet. After some prodding and poking I managed to find the emergency drainage hole.
They weren't mentioned in the Haynes manual and I found no reference to them online. So in case you are wondering, there is one on each side, you have to cut open the carpet to find them. It's just a round metal cover plate (about 2' in diameter) sitting on top of a hole straight through the floor panel (about 1 1/2" in diameter), about 9" in front of each seat and 3" in from the door.
The cover plate is the round blue thing:
The cover plate/plug is normally glued into place. I assume that if the interior fills with water and you want to empty it in a hurry, you just pop it out from underneath
My car must have hit something, because the rim of the hole was partly bent downwards (go figure) and the cover plate/plug was bent almost in two, thus leaving a nice big unsealed gap to really scoop up the puddles.
I hammered the cover plate flat again, used the car jack to press the rim of the hole back up flush with the rest of the floor panel and then gummed it all up with silicone sealant. I'll glue the carpet back down once the sealant has dried properly and pop the nice new mat back on top. Fingers crossed!
It Snow Joke
11 minutes ago
7 comments:
Minis used to have holes in the floor with rubber grommets in them that made useful drains. It was years after I'd sold my Mini that I discovered that BL had put the holes in because they couldn't stop the car leaking and that they weren't as I had supposed, a by-product of some part of the manufacturing process.
B, but did you have to take Stanley knife to carpet to get at the bungs or were they easily visible?
To be fair, soft top cars are notorious for leaking/flooding, so it was nice of Mazda to think of it but a bit spiteful hiding them.
My guess is that them there holes are part of the manufacturing process as they are glued and sealed down and not easily accessible. My guess is that they are drain holes for when the shell is dip painted and allow surplus paint to drain away.
L, they are easily accessible from underneath, you just pop 'em up from the outside.
That said, you are the expert and so you're probably right.
M, the carpets in a Mini were not glued down, AFAIR, you could just unfix them round the edges (self-tapping screws?) and lift them up and there were the bungs.
L, so my initial theory was right and the other was just a vicious rumour?
MW. Weeeellll. I wouldn't call my self an 'expert'....
B. From memory the Mini manufacturing process put a long pole through the shell from the speedo hole in the front bulkhead to another hole in the rear bulkhead around which the shell could be rotated. The hole in the rear bulkhead was blanked off with a plate.
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