closing front door when back door is still open
 

this happened to me accidently a while back and i think its coincidence but i have the noise in door prob. when its cold now, i hope its not from something being jarred loose when front door was closed without the back being shut is there anything in the manual about that i know shutting front then back is BBBAAADDD but what about what happened to my baby??? is it no biggie?

I nearly killed my friend for slamming the front before closing the back.. and I mean SLAM. Yet nothing happened.. no scratches, door is fine etc.

When I sit in the 350z, I only have to exert minimal force to close the door, these 8 doors are pretty sturdy.. need to close it hard.. smack!

There is a whole thread about cold temps and a squeaking or rattling that happens in the doors. I will give you a quick overview but for more info try a search. I took mine back to the dealership because in cold temps it sounded like someone with rubber pants was sitting on leather seats somewhere inside my front doors. The dealer took the doors apart (I got to watch) and there are 2 styrofoam blocks in each door. These blocks are held in place by 2 screws (in each block) that were heated to melt the blocks in place. In cold conditions styrofoam tends to make more noise and slightly shrink which allows them to make the noise I was hearing. The dealer removed them and remounted them with weatherstrip glue. This seemed to work fairly well getting rid of most of the sound. I am uncertain what the blocks are for and the dealer couldn't tell me exactly either. Maybe to help hold the shape of the door? Noise reduction? Who knows. I hope this helps.

The front door does not lock, and shoudn't even stay closed, if you close it without the back door being closed first. It should just bounce right open. The front door locks on the latch of the back door (I think they call it the B pillar.)

I did that too although it wasn't a full "slam" and as the above poster mentions it basically just bounced back open.

No ill effects that I can determine.

About the only thing that will happen is that the door will bounce back on the rubber seals and SMACK YOU IN THE KNEES like mine did! Ouch!

:o

Yup, I've done it a couple times HARD, and no ill effects. That was over a month ago so if something was going to be rattling, I would have heard it by now.

Maybe better crash protection? OK this is a stretch, but I would rather have 2 inches of stryofoam then 2 inches of air between me and any object in an impact situation.

i3man, I believe it's not actually a B pillar because it's not permanently attached to the frame. Take any normal 4dr and the piece between the doors is the B pillar. The genius of the Mazda design, however, is that when the doors are shut, they lock into position and when stress is exerted on the frame they create a kind of virtual B pillar. It's the best of both worlds, easier access with plenty of frame rigidity. Kudos to Mazda.

What the heck? I'm TheColonel....

Re: closing front door when back door is still open
 

I bought a door bumper set for mine in case this happens (which it did). The set consists of two rubber bumpers that glue to the lower side of the inner rear door. It keeps the sides of the front doors from hitting the rear interior. Works fine. Got it from trussvillemazda.com I think.

Thats what those things are for! I though they were to prevent the seat belt buckle from damaging the trim when ypu release the belt from the clip. I just might have to invest in a pair!

even if you slam the rear door onto a shut front door there's no ill effects, at least not in my experience. The padded part of the rear door impacts the outer front door and just bounces gently back. Looks like these mazda engineers anticipated everything.