See attached pics from Mazda6. Same issue. The abysmal quality of the plain-painted tension ring, CAD plated screws, etc. merits preemptive treatment with rustproofing chemical...

Also, the screws may be JIS, Japanese Industrial Standard... (not Phillips).

 

See attached pics from Mazda6. Same issue. The abysmal quality of the CAD plated tension ring, screws, etc. merits preemptive treatment with rustproofing chemical...

💕

Hi Cdn17Sport6MT,

Thanks for the reply. That is the same issue. I do have a friend with 2016 Mazda 6. His looks marginally better than mine probably because his is an year newer and only 70K miles. He checked his after I discovered that mine was in such a bad shape.

Do I understand that you successfully repaired this issue? How did you remove the screws? Can you elaborate further?

Thanks!

 

This post/thread details the fellow's prbs. The pix shows the new screws he got.

Strong gas smell from 2014 2.5. 196K miles.

Bottom line: he was unable to get out three of the screws. He ends up keeping tank at less than 3/4ths full. Not an ideal resolution.

Reference is made to a possible recall or tsb. You might check that out first.

 

Uh oh,

I've been Mazda fan for many years but crap like this makes me reconsider. I am sure my buddy is happy that my problem triggered him to check the state of his retention ring. His replacement is arriving this week. The question is do I even have a chance to removing and then successfully replacing the ring and gasket.

It does seem that the guy form Mazda6Club gave up after being able to remove only 3 of the screws. As I see it, I have two options here, 1) try do drill and ease out the old screws or 2) completely drill out the screws and replace them with self-tapping screws as from what I understand the threads on the tank are not through treads. And if that doesn't work I will be stranded and will have to replace the whole tank. Ugh. JIS bit will not help as I rubbed one of the screw heads with my finger and it completely came off. Unbelievable.

As far as the recall goes, the only recall I was able to find was for a weld back in 2016 and my VIN is not among the recalled vehicles.

 

I've a 2014 Mazda 6 with this exact same problem. Like OP's, my screw heads are much too rusted to even hope of extracting them. I tried pentrating oil + time, but it didn't help given the degree of rust and small screws. Without being able to confirm whether the screw holes are through holes or not, I haven't been willing to try drilling them out incase I fill the tank with rust and metal. It seems they must be blind holes to avoid fuel leaking out, but I just haven't been able to confirm. For almost a year, I've just tried to avoid filling the tank up all the way. I'd love to know if anyone successfully fixed this.