It's raining outside...and a little inside too!

[CMNTMXR57]

Well, funny that this should be a top topic. Yesterday (Monday), we had an hour long monsoon fall on us! Anyway, later yesterday, I went to the car, opened the front passenger door, went to pick off a few specks of dirt (I had vacuumed the car on Saturday), only to find my carpet soaking wet.

I simply think the combination of the level of rain, and the fact that the car was sitting out in the street (next to the curb obviously), on an angle towards the passenger side, just overwhelmed the drainage tray and tubes in the sunroof and leaked down. I remember this happening not to long after I bought the car 3+ years ago.

So I shall let it dry out, and wait for the next monsoon.

[2000Silverbullet]

How does that much water get into a closed sunroof?

Or do you leave it open.

[CMNTMXR57]

How does that much water get into a closed sunroof?

Or do you leave it open.

It was closed. As hard as it was raining, no seal between window and metal frame will keep out water. GM never intended it to be a 100% water tight seal either. It'll keep the majority of it out, then the remainder that does get through, stays in the drainage tray and funnels down the 4 drain tubes. LIke I said, it was the combination of the car leaning to the passenger side and it coming down so hard, so fast that it overwhelmed the seal, and drainage mechanism's of the car.

We got ~1" of rain in about an hour. It was coming down so hard at one point, I couldn't see the car out in the street from our window.

[2000Silverbullet]

Wow. I don't have an appreciation for that much rain It NEVER rains that hard here on the wet west coast. Just a light drizzle that goes for days.

[GXPete]

Yeah, I've been through plenty of those storms that CMNTMXR is describing. Some that included hail. And he's right, you can't see 10' in front of you. My wife and I were traveling home from a concert on the interstate one evening a couple years ago and it started raining like that. The only thing worse than driving in rain like that is doing it on the interstate, and the only thing worse than that is doing it at night. And the only thing worse than that is having some moron in a Trans Am come flying up the passing lane at probably close to 100, hydroplaning and losing control right next to you. It was like he made a right turn just missing my bumper and then went into a wild spin 10' in front of me before slamming the guardrail. When he finally stopped it (I had slowed the Rainier to a crawl by then), he was coherent enough to pull it over out of the driving lane. My wife was freaking out, and wanted off the highway by then. I decided to help my wife this time around and let someone else deal with the moron and I got out of there. It rained like that almost all the way home (75 miles). Very harrowing. Not something I would want to repeat, but someone was 'taking care of us' that night.

[CMNTMXR57]

We had some heavier rain again overnight, and the floor was soaked again this morning, but only in one spot. So it looks like I'm going to have to check and see if one of my drain tubes on that side are plugged or getting plugged. :(

That means, I gotta take the corner of the headliner apart again. :(

[GXPete]

You sure it's not the door? That's ultimately where my biggest problem was.

[CMNTMXR57]

I didn't see any moisture inside the weatherstripping on the door, so right now, I'm ruling that out.

[GXPete]

Do you have to deal with the headliner? Now that I've done mine, the next time I know I can blow out the front ones from the holes inside the tray. As for the rear ones, I may just pull the tube out in the trunk where it connects to the grommet and 'backblow' it.

[CMNTMXR57]

I think I can just get that corner down, enough to get a hand in there, without having to take everything apart for the 5th time.

[CMNTMXR57]

Found the problem.

Took apart the passenger side headliner today. Drain tube was perfect. No kinks in the plumbing, etc. So I then put the weatherstripping back on in that area around the door, closed it up, and doused the car with the hose. Sure enough, it leaked like a drain. Following the water trail, I found that the corner around the drain hose outlet, on the drainage tray, was cracked. I evidently didn't notice it when I put it in.

Anyway, I JB Welded the piss out of it, let it sit for a few hours, then tested it again tonight while still apart, by once again dousing it with water for about 10 minutes at point blank range with the hose. Not a drop of water...

[2000Silverbullet]

It's plastic. It's made to break and degrade over time. It was designed that way.

I'm being facetious. That's one of the reasons I hate plastic. It cracks and breaks. Doesn't take much. Time or force.

[GXPete]

Glad you got it fixed quickly. Gotta love plastic weld epoxies. I've used it for several things on my Bonnie and more to come. When I was working on my sunroof a couple weeks ago, I pulled the wind deflector out and inadvertently snapped off one of the little tabs on the front corner. Doh! Talk about something that shouldn't be made of plastic...anyway, put the plastic weld to it and 24 hours later had it back in the car.

At some point in time the right side of the console took a hit where it connects to the dash. Both of the bakelite bolt tabs and the retainer hole in the dash for it are broken. I've got all of the pieces so I'm hoping to 'weld' that all back together soon. It really is tenacious stuff. Laughs at CA.

[CMNTMXR57]

Now I'm hoping my carpet will dry out nicely. I've been parking it out in the sun as much as possible, to help facilitate drying.

[2000Silverbullet]

You should remove the carpeting to dry it thoroughly.
The matt under the carpet is so absorbant it'll take forever to dry any other way and will actually promote corrosion of the floor pan.

[GXPete]

I've got to agree with Paul. When I took my carpet out to dry it out I stood on it and the water literally ran out of the 'sponge'...

[CMNTMXR57]

It was pretty much dry when I tried squeezing anything out of it tonight.

[GXPete]

Since fixing the door and sunroof water leaks I've been going through car washes and leaving it out in the rain and not a drop of water has showed up in the car. I have a paper towel 'trap' stuffed down in one corner of the unibody floor where I believe the water was coming in from the door leak and then draing down the side next to the seat and into the back footwell. The towel has been dry since I put it in there. So I felt confident that I had stopped the leaks and could put the carpeting back in in the next week or so.

Today I went to my dad's for Father's Day, and while there, we had a severe thunderstorm that went through with a heavy downpour. I jokingly said to the family that this would be a good final test of the job I did fixing the leak. Turns out it didn't stand up to the test of the heavy downpour. I had a puddle of water in the rear footwell again. But here's where it gets weird. I didn't notice it initially. When I got in the car, everything up front seemed dry. My paper towel trap was totally dry and there didn't seem to be any water. I do have the floor mats in the car just to catch road dirt off my feet but no carpeting. When I looked in the back I could see that I had a puddle. That was discouraging enough, but more so was the fact that by the time I got home just a few miles away, my paper towel trap was sopping wet and when I lifted up my floor mat, there were droplets of water all over the aluminum foil pad. Additionally, there seemed to be water around all the tack welds in the rear footwell. Could I be getting water from underneath or did the puddle, which wasn't big to begin with but enough to move around, move forward when I applied the brakes. It did appear that there was water in the weatherstripping at the bottom of the door opening and under the door trim again when I got home, so I'm not sure if that was full of water and drained out through as I was driving or what. I just can't tell where the water came in this time. Pulling the door apart and fixing the seal was fun the first time, but this is already getting old. And Andrew was right, there is water under the aluminum foil mat in the back, so I guess I'm going to have to try and pull that up at some point. Can that be replaced? Not sure where to source that. It must be there for a reason, right?

Edit: I'm 99% sure this didn't come from the sunroof. I truly think that one's been taken care of. But I'll double check that again.

[CMNTMXR57]

Looks like your only solution... Gut the interior, and sit inside while you have someone douse the car with water from a hose. Wait for the fun to drip in...

[GXPete]

Yeah, I had pretty much resigned myself to that option. Will have to give the wife a crash course in auto-flooding. The gutting won't be difficult. Just need to pull the seats so that I can really see what's happening. The carpeting is still out of it. Like I said, I'm 99% sure it's not coming from the roof, so it's just a matter of doing like you said, getting in it, having her flood it and watch for it.