OK, this is a project car that ive been working on for a year now. some of you may remember my post last year (just in time for haloween haha) where my interior molded up somethin fierce... if you remember the pictures it was scarier than any gremlin, goblin, or witch. anyway, i pulled ALL the interior and cleaned it all off. the entire interior currently sits in my basement.

well... it started raining again this year, and you know what? its still leaking. now that the interior is out i see where the water is collecting: the spare tier well! the only thing is i have NO IDEA how its getting in there. every attempt i have made to replicate various rain (pouring water down the gutters on each side of the hatch), spraying the hatch with a hose, has turned up absolutly NOTHING! no leaks, no water dripping in, and no signs of a parth for water. so i gave up yesterday after my tests. well, it rained again lastnight. i came out and there was a nice puddle in my spare wheel well again. no sign of a stream of water, no sign of how it got in... it just materialized into a contained puddle, like scotty beamed it in or something. so either im the butt of a long running practical joke, or this car just hates me. im looking for some advice on what to do/check, or if anyone else has experienced this? untill this leak is fixed i cant put the car back together, and i pretty much am ready to at this point.

thanks, heath

 

ok if you really want to, it doesnt help much to take a bucket of water or bottle or something and poor water on specific parts unless you have a general idea of where its coming from. the best way to find a leak would probably be to take a hose and shower your, the whole car because there could be a leak somewhere up front and it could be channeliing back along some trim or soemthing.
you may also ahve a bad seal on your rear hatch, if you shower your car for 10 minutes, you are guaranteed to get an idea if not solve you problem.
if none of that works you can always go out and sit in your car when it rains

 

search on a post from jimlab. he did a write up on this.

 

oh...i forgot all about that, i remember reading it too

 

i have tried the bucket of watter approach in various areas, and garden hose... i think its some sort of extreemly slow leak, and its insanely hard to trace. and there is no trim left for it to channel through

 

Does your car have a sunroof? There are drain tubes for the sunroof - one might be broken, not traveling to the outside, etc. Not sure of the routing of the drain tubes, as I don't have a sunroof .

Dale

 

yeah i have a sunroof but as far as my water tests suggest, its not the problem. i will however clean out the drain tubes

 

It won't be much help, but nevertheless: I have the same problem, the water is collecting in my spare tire well. I didn't address the problem yet, but I have found something strange. I don't have windshield and light cleaner sprayers mounted yet, so I'm not using it. But I filled up the windshield container in the trunk all the way, so that I didn't get the light in the dashboard on. Well, now I discovered the light is comming on again, and the container has less than half water in it. Maybe I'm up to something? Again, I didn't have time yet to deal with it. BTW, I have roof window too.

 

Yeah it sucks, some people say the wing, others say the hatch seal or window seal. Whatever it is, sure is annoying. It's ruined a few of my things and pissed me off something major.

 

New weatherstripping is cheap, just replace all the seals. They are probably due for it anyhow.

 

The weatherstrip for the sunroof alone is $119...

 

my experiences with problems a leaky sunroof resulted with puddle under the driver and passenger seat so I think it has to do with the rear hatch, maybe even the brake lights?

 

all hail jimlab! his post in another thread lead me to what i am almost positive was the problem:

"Also, if you remove the triangular black plastic panels in front of each rear tail light, check the (white?) plastic screw insert farthest forward. It has a foam "gasket" around it that can dry out and lose its seal. When this happens, water can leak into the car and build up in the side panels or travel along the wiring harnesses to other parts of the car. I had water show up under my bins after I had my hatch repainted the first time, and some silicone applied around those two inserts (one per side) fixed the problem."

the seals around these 2 white plastic screw inserts were completely disintegrated. i pulled them and filled the holes with silicone. ill replace them when i get the time to order some new ones. again thanks everyone for their suggestions... im going to be replacing as many seals as i can afford as well

 

DAMN! My mistake, weatherstripping I've bought for other vehicles has been cheap, never had to order any pieces for the FD

 

I had a similar rear-hatch-area water leak that was easily repaired with silicon sealant. I found several other posts that described this problem area, so I'm just repeating their solution, but it worked for me.

There are two black-plastic triangular shaped filler pieces that set between the hatch and body just in front of the taillight assemblies; one of each side. The 3 screws that hold each of these in fillers place are threaded in to plastic inserts that are snapped in to the metal body-panel underneath, and each of these inserts is sealed with a thin rubber gasket. Over time these gaskets dry-out and loose their seal. They could also be missing if the inserts had previously been removed for some reason.

I used black silicon RTV applied to both sides of the rubber gaskets and then re-installed the inserts. I allowed the sealant to cure overnight before replacing the fillers and screws. This completely stopped my leak.

 

Yep Jim called it right.

As far as the weatherstripping on the FD it is very good and weathers very well. I haven't seen any of the stuff that is worn out or broken down.

I have seen some of the seals get damaged from people being careless, cutting it or otherwise roughing it up.

 

Alright, you caught me. You've figured out my joke. I've been using Scotty's transporter to move mold and semi-filtered cat urine into your spare wheel well... did the humpback whales and plexiglass make it as well? Don't worry the gastank fumes will keep west-nile mosquitos from breeding in the puddle.

PS: I know how you feel. My 1st beater BMW would leak directly onto the ECU (of all places) and fill up the glove box. The content of that glovebox was worth more than the car. I ran a hose over the possible leakage points for an hour each, got nothing. I finally started cramming silicone in the window seals and got it.