Rain = water leaks....

[Gwynleym10]

My seat belts are soaked and so it my rear footwells carpets, what the liekly culprit? Rear window seals?

Sunroof drain?

Something else?



thanks

[charlE30]

Interesting, I too had wet seatbelts after a really heavy downpour. I posted about it and no one had heard of it before I still haven't got to the bottom of it but I think it's to do with the sunroof seal and drain pipes.

[Cava]

Sounds like it could be the rear sunroof drains - I have a similar problem on one of my cars where the rear foot wells are getting wet. I stripped the interior of the car and found that the section of the roof where the rear drain pipes of the sunroof attach were rusted away. As a result, the water is running out of the roof in two directions.

The front door pillar has a small amount but the majority seems to be going down the rear window pillars and ending up either in the boot (staining the panel in the boot behind the seat back) or going under the rear seat / down the door pillar and ending up in the rear foot wells, depending on the angle the car is parked.

You can do a basic check on state of the drain section of the roof by sliding the sunroof back and shining a torch between the sunroof panel and head lining (believe it or not!) but to do a true check you will need to at least remove the rear side windows (on a two door model) and look under the head lining.

Hope this helps!

[Gwynleym10]

roof rusted!

This doesn't sound good...........

[AndrewL]

Do check the sunroof drains (plenty of technical articles around about doing this) but I have experienced two other sources of leaks which cause that problem and these are not as well known.

First is improperly seated or damaged/split rubber cable gaiters where the wires go from the door post into the door. This would probably only apply to a four door but water is fiendish stuff for running everywhere.

The second is a little more tricky: I had a 320 saloon delivered new in 1986 with this one (D133 WPB, if it's still out there somewhere). The exterior trim piece behind the window (which actually forms part of the roof water run-off system) is press fitted to the body by studs on it which push into plastic "sockets" in the normal way that trim bits on cars are held together. If the plastic socket, which is sitting in a hole in the bodywork, is split hey presto the water runs along the roof gutter and neatly through the bodywork to collect in the rear footwells. Dealer never managed to find that one but I eventually did.

Have fun; bit of a bugger with the weather we've bin havin lately.

[AndrewL]

There's another leak description for the 2-door, round the window rubber detailed on the Linwar site. Their commenst seem well based on their experience.

http://www.linwar.com/bmw_tips.html#T02

Andy