Exploding sunroof...wtf?!

Tempered glass is most fragile on the edges. A blow to the edge and it can shatter. The edges cannot have any contact with metal for instance and must be protected by means of rubber type material. I wonder if the issue has to do with how the glass in affixed to the frame and not allowing sufficient ”float” to the glass. I have not heard of spontaneous breakage where tempered is used in side glass that is frameless and vertical.
Hmm, have you seen this gentleman's Tesla? The side window exploded while sitting inside his garage....
 
IMHO, laminated glass should be used all around. It breaks but not into pieces around you or onto you.
 
Glad to hear they’re covering it. It looks like your moonroof may have exploded outward like ours did, though plenty of glass fell inside. It was the pic that showed the outward explosion that got Mazda to cover it in our case (and a fantastic service advisor). Hard to tell on my phone, but looks like the same happened to your sunroof. First thing we did on the new sunroof was to get tint installed, that way if it happens again we don’t get a glass shower
 
Well this happened to me on a 900 mile old 2021 CX-5 GTR. At 10:30am this morning when my wife left the house car was fine went out at 2pm to get a covid vaccine shot and the opened my car door and noticed glass and polen looked up and the moonroof was shattered and glass over the inside of the car was about 2 feet big of a hole. I was like what the hell landed in the car couldnt find anything.

Upon closer inspection noticed the glass was all pushed outwards like it exploded from inside out. The angles were much more sever then my pictures show but when I closed the door to get my phone camera a bunch more glass fell into the car.

The intial way it looked was a smaller whole 1.5ft to 2ft close to the center rear of the moonroof with glass angled all around it. Just had it towed to dealership. They were like we never heard of anything like this and agreed to talk to Mazda, hopefully it will be covered as its literally 3 weeks old.

Only thing of note is today was the hottest day of 2021 at 86 degrees and the hottest weather the car has been in this year so not sure if that played a factor.
 

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That's ridiculous. Cars can get over 150°F inside when parked in the sun on a hot day. Absolutely no reason the sunroof should be shattering in moderate heat. Mazda better be taking care of it.
 
I really hope so since the car is 3 weeks old. It will leave a really bad taste in my mouth if Mazda doesn’t do the right thing here.
 
I really hope so since the car is 3 weeks old. It will leave a really bad taste in my mouth if Mazda doesn’t do the right thing here.
It’d depend on how favorable your Mazda dealer’s report is, and how good his / her mood is at the time when the rep at Mazda North American Operations is facing the case. ;)

Honestly, with only 900 miles and 3 weeks old on your 2021 CX-5 GTR, I’d be surprised if your exploding moonroof doesn’t get covered under warranty unless your dealer found obvious evidence of hitting by the foreign object like this which was happened last night in DFW area:

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It’d depend on how favorable your Mazda dealer’s report is, and how good his / her mood is at the time when the rep at Mazda North American Operations is facing the case. ;)

Honestly, with only 900 miles and 3 weeks old on your 2021 CX-5 GTR, I’d be surprised if your exploding moonroof doesn’t get covered under warranty unless your dealer found obvious evidence of hitting by the foreign object like this which was happened last night in DFW area:

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is there anyone at Mazda Corp I should be contacting in the meantime?
 
Wow!!! Sorry to hear this. It sure takes the 'shine' off of a new car when something like this happens.

You had the CX towed to the dealership? I personally wouldn't have had it towed but that's just me. I would have taken a ton of pics and then vacuumed up the glass and drove to the dealership myself. Too many bad things can happen during a tow.

They did load it up on a flatbed, right? Did you watch as they did this? What did they hook the winch cable to in the front of the car?
 
Wow!!! Sorry to hear this. It sure takes the 'shine' off of a new car when something like this happens.

You had the CX towed to the dealership? I personally wouldn't have had it towed but that's just me. I would have taken a ton of pics and then vacuumed up the glass and drove to the dealership myself. Too many bad things can happen during a tow.

They did load it up on a flatbed, right? Did you watch as they did this? What did they hook the winch cable to in the front of the car?

the dealership insisted I get it towed. Probably dumb on my part but I wanted evidence intact. This type of truck came below and they used wheel dollies. I told him 4x it was AWD. The guy didn’t seem like a dumbass.


Wheel Lift

Wheel lift tow trucks also tow the vehicle on two wheels but are equipped with a powerful hydraulic yoke that lifts the vehicle off the ground. This provides better stabilization and less chance that the vehicle being towed will suffer any damage. Wheel doilies will still be needed to use this option on an AWD vehicle, and there is still some danger of collision with ground debris.
 
It's not the absolute temperature of the glass, but usually uneven temperature changes (non-uniform heating and expansion) within the glass that causse it to shatter. And if there is a significant defect in the glass (non-uniform distribution of tempering), it doesn't take much to shatter them; Anything that causes a rapid temp change to the entire or partial surface. Repeated (even light) vibration can shatter defective tempered glass.

As all tempered glass is under tension and sunroofs tend to be slighting curved towards the sky in deference to the roof shape, so when they shatter, makes sense the natural force drives the shards up, at least in the center.
 
I just really wish I had a picture of it before I closed the door and all the glass fell it was undeniably obvious that it was a defect. It looked like a volcano angled upwards towards the initial hole.
 
is there anyone at Mazda Corp I should be contacting in the meantime?
You can always contact Customer Experience Center, Mazda North American Operations and complain the case. At lease MNAO will have more data on exploding moonroof, and may be doing something to make it happening less.
 
Anybody find it odd that the dealer never heard of an exploding sunroof on the CX-5. They must have just started to sell the Mazda brand last week. SMH
Actually “never heard of such problem” has been a standard answer by the dealer for any car problem when you ask about it. :rolleyes:
 
Actually “never heard of such problem” has been a standard answer by the dealer for any car problem when you ask about it. :rolleyes:
True , but just sayin'. It's a brand new car and Mazda will no doubt take care of it, so why don't they just admit that while it's not unknown, it's not a common problem. A little honesty can increase confidence in a dealer. Getting BS'ed from the get go ( and discovering this after first encounter) would make me question any later dealings with them.
 
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