E30 Zone

hi guys, 318i touring, I have had some slightly moist carpet for a while now in this beautiful English weather, thought il investigate today...

turns out under my carpet its wetter then a otters pocket.
about a 1cm deep after squeezing the carpet abit



good news though, my floor plan is a minter which crosses out the rusty floor plan conclusion...

I couldn't investigate any more cause I couldn't get past this point...



how to I pull the carpet back over this point??

also any further help of where else to look back and investigate?! I have looked on the section on the e30 zone.

it definitely isn't coolant... certainly water!

is it easier to take out the passenger seat aswell and take the carpet fully out now? obviously I will have to do that anyway to take it inside to dry! which I can imagen will take an age!

thanks guys

You need to remove the accelerator pedal from its mount to remove the carpet. Door sill plastic trims are removed by sliding forwards clear of the rearmost clip, then lifting the trim clear of this clip and sliding the trim backwards and off.
Seats out, centre consoles out, small cut above the steering shaft, and then you can remove the carpet. Tightest point is under the heater box, and some cut around the carpet here to make it easier to refit. Beware of wires under the carpet if you cut!
It dries surprisingly quickly if you can hang it up by one rear corner. The water will quickly drain down to the opposite corner, where it can be squeezed out.
Replace the pedal and drive the car in the wet with the carpet out. Sprinkling talcum powder around will help show where the water is coming in.

benurminge wrote:

Is that your driveway I can see through the drain hole? if so I'm sure you should have a bung in that so may explain the moist carpet

no that is a red coloured bung for some reason pac1982
okay that sounds a great plan with the talcum power, but am I being dumb by saying how can I re-attach my pedal if the pedal itself is attatched to the carpet? or have I got that wrong by mis understanding you?

how do you remove the pedal from its mount?

cheers guys

I think that any attempt to prise the pedal off it's mounting socket will break it at it's hinge.

I cut my carpet from the socket to the edge. (The cut is covered by the overmat).

Subsequent carpet removal is easy.

Or take the circlip off the top part of the foot pedal and slot it through the carpet when removing it backwards and out

Exactly, remove the clip at the top of the accelerator, I've done the carpet job twice now and only did one tiny invisible cut above the steering shaft. I had water in the driver's foot well caused by a crappy DIY amp power cable entering the cabin but most of it was coming from a bad seal at the bottom of the plastic sheet that is behind the door card.

can a sunroof seal cause the same problem ??

The base of the accelerator pedal passes through a slot in the carpet, and into a rectangular steel box, about 10mm high or so, welded to the floor.
The pic. of the pedal in this link is reasonably true to life: http://2009.bmwfans.info/parts/catalog/ ... cable_rhd/
The rectangular box has three small rectangular holes in it, into which engage the three plastic latches that you can just make out in the pic. A small screwdriver inserted into one of the end slots, forcing under the carpet shroud, can be used to push in the plastic latch and lever up that end of the pedal. /the other two latches usually disengage themselves once one end is levered up, but a second screwdriver can be used if they resist too strongly.

adamh325 wrote:can a sunroof seal cause the same problem ??

No, the sunroof seals aren't designed to be totally waterproof - their purpose is to limit the amount of water coming in and to deal with wind noise. Water that gets past them is collected by fixed and sliding gutters, and drained to the underside of the car by four drain tubes.