Guys I was changing a starter on my 2006 Mazda 3 moving some cables under the car and this thing fell to the ground from somewhere in the engine bay. Does anybody know what it is, where was it attached and is it important? Please see the picture. Thanks
Cable/wire retaining clip.
Attaches to larger hose or pipe, wires retained through other opening.
Heck, it could be something that ran over in the road and blew up in the engine compartment and just happen to fall out while doing the starter…
Or what Chris said… lol
At first I thought that too but it is not a simple clip on hose/wires thing. You can see all kinds of tabs and notches on it. 
You’ll find out!
If it’s a wiring holder, how did it fall off? It should be hanging with the wire through that closed opening.
Being such flimsy plastic, and that it fell out of a Mazda, it’s probably something critical; start saving for a new engine.
Edit: The coolant temp sensor in a Ford Escape has the cheapest, flimsiest, plastic piece to stop it from popping out…unbelievably bad design…I added wire to make sure it would never pop out.
S TZ, you are making me nervous! Are you serious or joking?
If that was loose and fell out, I wouldn’t worry about it. I was about to ask if the cables and hoses look to be in the correct locations, but that can be very hard to tell. You could drop by a Mazda dealer parts counter and see if they recognize it. How big is it?
You really are not much help to people asking questions . That strange plastic thing is not going to kill the engine and this person is not asking about a Ford.
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its about a ring size loop.
and it doesn’t look like it broke off of something.
Retaining clip with pull ring. The pull ring suggests that this was to be removed during installation of a part. Where did you find this clip?
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it fell to the ground from the engine bay driver size around battery when I was installing a starter underneath.
I’ve never seen anything like that used in any of my cars. Is it broken, or does the loop-catch still work? If the catch still works, I expect it was used to secure some of the wiring near to the battery.
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I doubt that the white plastic part holds any wires or tubing. If it does, then how could it fall off? The ring at the top is closed and would still be hanging off those wires if the clasp at the bottom came loose.
good point, nothing was going through the closed loop I would say too.
I’m sure what you mean does it work? The piece is in one piece and its not broken.