Major Interior Leaking - Oh no

[OhioTouring]

I need some advice on this one.

Today, I go to get in my 92 wagon and there is standing water in the drivers side floor.

It has been very cold here in Cincinnati, and the car was iced over with the recent storm. But, I did drive it last night and no water. However, the windows seemed to want to fog up quickly. It was about 14 degrees last night.

Does anyone have an idea of what caused the leak? It was only in the drivers side.

Thanks so much

[Elekta]

Need more information.

Do you have roof rails? Are the rubber inserts in place, or are the rails open to the elements? Check your driver door carefully. Inspect all rubber seals, window, door, etc. If you really want to find out, go to a car wash with a friend and have him/her sit in the drivers seat while you blast the seams around the door. Also, if you do not have the rubber inserts in your rails, you should blast the front rail with soapy water to make sure that the bubbles come up in the back rail area and vice versa. You may need to use weed wacker trim line to ream out your drains. Another area is the space between the hood and the windshield.

Car wash with a friend may give you results the fastest.

hth

[OhioTouring]

Thanks for the reply.

The door seals are good. I had replaced them last year. I do not have roof rails.

I think it has to do with the section between the hood and the windshield. That area was stuffed with ice and snow and still is. But how could it get into the interior?

[Adnan]

Hi,

Have you checked that the drain holes for the sunroof are not plugged? That is often the cause of interior flooding.

Regards,
Adnan

[John B.]

Are you sure it isn't a coolant leak? How could you have water leaking in at 14*F?

[pingu]

If you suspect the windscreen seal to the chassis, paint soapy water around the exterior of the windscreen and blow compressed air around the interior perimeter of the windscreen. If you get bubbles then you've found your leak.

[Phatty5BMW]

Heater core blew a hose?

[e345spd]

Ok, I really should write a real tutorial on how I fixed a problem like this on my car. I never found anyone who had fixed it, even though I searched and searched google. Heres how it went down.

When I bought my car, (1989 525i 5spd, 140k, $2000) the guy said that there was a problem with water being under the rear seat, passenger side. Sure enough, every time I looked under the seat, there would be a little pool of water, and the sound insulation would be wet. The dealer I bought this car from said it was his personal car, and he had spent a long time trying to figure out what the problem was. Well, I also had a very hard time. Nothing in the interior was wet, seats, carpet, even the sound insulation around the pool of water was dry! There was always water, but never alot, sometimes more, sometimes less. Many months later, I was changing the front seats, and while doing the passenger side, I put my knee on the front passenger floor, ( no mats, otherwise I wouldn't have felt it) and noticed that my knee was wet. I immediately removed the seats, pulled up the carpet, and the whole passenger side floor was a pool of water underneath, and the sound insulation was soaked! The reason the carpet never seemed to be wet was because the insulation had done just that, insulated the top of the carpet from the water. So now I knew how the water was getting under the back seat, and I had a feeling that the water was coming from the front passenger side, and running under/through the carpet to the back. So I sopped up the water, squeezed it out of the insulation on the bottom of the carpet propped it up with a screwdriver and waited. Sure enough, next time it rained, the front passenger side was a little lake, and if it had rained more, it would have run to the back.
So I check the windshield, I checked the doors, I checked everything, and nothing leaked. After 3-4 hours with a hose, I found the problem. http://www4.ncsu.edu/~ikyirka/images/leakfix1.JPG
The red X shows the area of the problem, the blue arrow the direction the water would take to get under the carpet.


continued next post

[e345spd]

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~ikyirka/images/leakfix%202.JPG

This is closer up, pretend the blue is water. What happens is the water flows down under the ECU area
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~ikyirka/images/leakfix%203.JPG
I noticed it would run in there, pool up, and start draining only after it had a good bit of standing water under the ecu box area. What was draining it? Well, after the water got high enough, it would reach a hole that went through the firewall and into the cabin. This hole was for wires, and the water was never meant to get that high, so when it did, it would run right through under the glovebox, to the underside of the passenger side carpet. So why was the water not acting like it should and draining before it got too high?

continued next post

[e345spd]

The reason is the drain for that area is in the fender well.
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~ikyirka/images/leakfix%204.JPG
Remove the plastic that covers the whole fender well
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~ikyirka/images/leakfix%205.JPG
Under the plastic, there will be two little flared slits in the metal. Mine were both completely clogged with perfectly sized pieces of pine tree bark, I used a twist tie to get them out, and water immediately started flowing out. However, there will be quite a bit of crap in there, so make sure you clean it out from the top and the bottom, and run your hose so water goes through those drains. Make sure it's clean, or the problem might come back.

Because yours is the driver side, you might have the same thing going on under the fuse box area, so check around there, and maybe take out the wheel well liner and look for the same sort of drains

hope this helps

[e345spd]

Oh yeah, I'm putting koni's in, hence the lack of a strut/wheel.

[bsell]

I need some advice on this one.

Today, I go to get in my 92 wagon and there is standing water in the drivers side floor.

It has been very cold here in Cincinnati, and the car was iced over with the recent storm. But, I did drive it last night and no water. However, the windows seemed to want to fog up quickly. It was about 14 degrees last night.

Does anyone have an idea of what caused the leak? It was only in the drivers side.

Thanks so much

Check the driver's door drain holes. I have seen these holes get plugged up and cause the whole door to become a bathtub on a hinge. Once the tub gets full, the water overflows into the driver's floorboard (between the door and door panel).

If the drains are good, look in the firewall area for a body plug missing or torn, or a rubber seal displaced from the snow and ice.

Good luck,

Brian

[OhioTouring]

I have not had time to find the leak. The weather has been crappy and I do not have a place to put this thing inside.

The day it leaked, was a day after about 4 inches of Freezing Rain. I drove the car about an hour that day, and the next morning I saw the water. Since then, I have not seen any water come in, even in a major rain storm.

So, I think it was due in part to one of the drains you all mention being frozen and then unthawed enough when I drove it, but not enough to drain.

The odd thing now though, is my front windshield on the drivers side sure fogs up quick now when it's cold or rainy.

I live in the country, wonder if a mouse made a home somewhere and is plugging up a duct?

Anyways, as soon as it warms some here in Cincinnati, I will begin to track down the drains and make sure they are not plugged.

I don't think it is a heater core or heating system leak. No indication of anti-freeze at all and the radiator level is still full.

Thanks again to everyone who posted with the helpful tips. I'll update when or if I find more info.