Right Rear passenger carpet wet

I've done the cursory 15 minutes of google searching for NMS water leaks.

Question: can sunroof drains leak into right rear passenger footwell?

Mine is slightly moldy and wet after a rain event.
I notice extreme interior humidity. I chalked it up to Kansas summer.

Additional background, 2 years ago I left the passenger rear window open overnight. Of course it rained. I removed the seat, lifted the carpet and dried the seat and carpet out.

I believe these two incidents are unrelated.
I will figure it out, but am looking for anyone's similar experience with right rear footwell moisture.

Thank.

Water from a leaking sunroof drain will migrate to the rear footwell...it must be slighty lower than the front? Not sure how to access the rear sunroof drains, but it might need attention, too.
Fronts are a pain, but doable. Search for a thread, I know there's one here! Good luck.

My 2004 Passat TDI experienced water on the floor which caused a problem with the wiring under the drivers side front after 90,000 miles. It was never diagnosed where the water was coming in although it was reported while the car was under warrantee but no fix was presented only speculation. Afterwards it got worse and car was traded in for a 2013 Passat TDI. I can only hope that the above problem is not a design flaw with water leaking to be a problem going forward.

I had the issue with my front drains being plugged, they wanted just under a grand to pull everything down to get at it. I took it home found a rubber tube that fit in the drain and pushed it down till it came up to the blocked part, I then took my air hose with at 90psi and blew out the debris. Problem solved! Now I did look for the rear ones just to give them a clearing also but they were hidden to far back, I must be honest I did not try to hard on the back ones.

Good luck


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DonC: No correlation between 2004 and NMS Passat. AFAIK, the only known leaks in the NMS have been the sunroof drains.

Good stuff.
I saw a lot of non NMS sunroof drain issues I'm my searching.
We just had a big storm. I'll see what the damage is.

Or one of the kids spilled a sippy cup of water. And I never noticed....

Some mysteries of life remain a mystery.

just be thankful it wasn't milk- trust me, it sucks

Oh, we've had a couple of those. And yeah, that's enough to seriously contemplate the buyback.

Well, the wife is out of town, so i have two vehicles. And the fear of "Oh my dear lord, what did you do to the Passat?!!" Can be minimized.

It is much worse than a sippy cup spill. Pics and write up to follow.

A drip dry on the deck.

1/2" of water, you've got to be kidding me. How long has the car been a bath tub for bacteria?

Removing the carpet..


Do loosen the center console.

Interior cheats:

Most fasteners (Don't be scared)

At Lower Seat Belt mount

Sneaky hidden fella. Thanks for the words TDI member (TBD)

Lift it up.

Remove nut, Pull straight up.

Cut the carpet as nessesary. (Don't remove the center console.)

Also:
Rear seat... pull up front on both driverside & Passenger side, push to rear bumper (driver side then passenger side) & extract.

No idea why this happened.
A. It is not from AC Unit condensation.

Dummy me, started car with no Passenger seat. Now Air bag light. Installed seat, all connections secure. Attempted to clear with VCDS. Still have air bag warnings.

Advise?

Might reset with multiple starts?

Update: Air bag light still on. Haven't tried clearing codes again.

It's been dry, so has the weather. So yesterday, I decided I needed a car wash. Power washed the girl down for 10 minutes. Then it rained 30 min later. And hard.

Got in the car today. The floor (less carpet still) has standing water on it. ***, well it's progress.

Observations: the water appears clean (no soap suds). (I didn't taste it to perform a basic chemical analysis, shame on me)

I notice the firewall passageway has 2 inches of water in it (see pic for area). The water is in the oval hole just below the sound deadener. This passage way goes up and over the exhaust routing hump.


Question: How does water get in there?

Firewall, Wiper cowl area, sunroof drains, wheelwell, underbody Aero skirts?

I added a drain hole in the low point of this plastic unit (with 8 attachments) to help facilitate drainage. It is gravity fead, and is not tied into the interior.


This is the passageway for cowl / windshield wiper area water AND is the oulet for the passenger side front sunroof drain. I poured water in the front right corner of the open sunroof. It flowed out here. As a side note it was wet before I testing the sunroof drain functionality.



Here are two body plugs behind the passenger wheelwell. They were dry when I pulled the plugs.


This is the oulet for the driver side front sunroof drain. I poured water in the front left corner of the open sunroof. It flowed out here. As a side note it was dry before I testing the sunroof drain functionality.

No to all of this.

Current speculation: A/C condensation. (On account that the water was not sudsy from an external source (the car wash).

Also, temporarily removed this nasty foam rotter from behind the wheelwell. good in theory, but it collects a lot of the stuff that turns steel into earth.


I imagine it cuts down on road noise.

My passenger floor is wet. The firewall passageway is full of water.

It's not from A/C condensation. It's not from a carwash (I ran it through another car wash over the weekend).

It rained last night. It must take longer duration event. Does any one have a schematic of the firewall arrangement? I'm wonding if there is a penetration through the cowl that will let water in.

Thoughts?

New speculation:
The seam sealer below the right side cowl vent has a leak / lets water pool. Given a long enough rain event the water accumulates in the lower firewall area.

This is the inside at the lower right firewall. The water has collected in the bulkhead. It is leaking under the seam sealer into the passenger foot area as shown below. I cut away a bit of the seam sealer to make the leak a bit more obvious. I believe there is a similar situation behind the plastic wheelwell cover underneath the cowl / sunroof drain. as shown in Pic 4 in post #19.


I'll keep digging.

I drilled three holes from outside under the vehicle through floor up into this bulkhead. Two through the under body hole which secures the plastic cap (this also has a hole in it now too), and another to the far underbody passenger side of this area. Now the area drains to atmosphere.

I believe the problem was from leaking body seams with sealer that pulled away from the metal.

I sprayed water from the garden hose on the firewall in the wheel opening after removing the plastic wheel well. The water accumulated rapidly. There are too many seams to efficiently diagnose the exact culprit. I did the easy shortcut fix.

Also noted the bulkhead area was dry towards the center console area which lead me to believe the leak was low and around the passenger cowl drain area.

I'm going to tape some plastic over the factory holes in the interior, and reinstall the sound mat and carpet.

What a bit of a pain, with a fairly unsatifying conclusion.

The air bag light cleared with a second attempt at clearing the codes.

Apparently I didn't clear the codes the original time. I had to go in and specifically request to clear codes by Control Module division.

OMG that was a lot of water! could it be because of some scratch in the roof?

Oh man...really sorry for such situations. In majority of cases, there is a problem with the window. My wife had something like this, her seat was always a bit wet after rains and at the service, they have found this issue. But the situation was solved by simple flood damage restoration works.
The scratch was my story! I have on my car the support for skies or like bicycles. Idk what happened, but under one of them, there was a whole (which of course I haven's observed). So, after i while, I went for regularly checks and they showed me that between the roof and the material there was....oh a mess... just a small whole!!!