Spent 5 hours dismantling and reassembling my Mazda 6 to find the cause of a rattle under the drivers seat which was driving my wife and I to distraction.
Disconnect the battery, disconnect the seat Air Bags and pretensioners, remove the front and rear door kick panels remove the front seat, remove the rear panel on the rear seat, remove the drivers side seat belts, remove the rear seat, remove the pillar panels, remove the kick panel in drivers foot well and remove the carpet clips.
I rolled back the carpet on the drivers side to expose the floor, nothing there to cause a rattle.
Flexible camera attached to the laptop searched inside the floor stiffener running across the floor under the drivers seat.
A foccing AA battery.
How in the foc was I going to get this out, the plastic rear foot well heater could not be removed without removing the centre console. I finally managed to catch it with a flexible claw working through 4 different 8mm holes and after 20minutes got it as close as possible to the door where I could fish it out easily.
Don't know how the battery got in there as there is a 20mm lip from the base of the floor to the slot for the heater.
Did a further check with the camera to make sure there was only one battery in there.
Now I had to put it all back together.
Then realised when I was ready to reconnect the air bags and pretensioners, realised I never reconnected the battery after disconnecting the air bags and pretensioners which means the ECU will have reset "foc".
Reconnected the air bags and pretensioners reconnected the battery.
Now I had to go through the procedure of getting the ECU to relearn its 108000 miles settings.
Ignition on for 1 minute, off for 1 minute. Start the car running rough took it for a 15minute spin, turn it off leave it for 1 hour, turn on the ignition for 1 minute, turn it off for 1 minute. Start the car leave it idle until it reached normal operating temperature (20 minutes), turn it off leave it for 5 minutes. Restart it and it appears to be back to normal.
Why the foc didn't I just reconnect the foccing battery.
At least the rattle is gone.