Frustrated: Water leak & Driver floor full of water

[Jake_S]

Frustrated -

My 05 wagon was parked last November, and yesterday I wanted to change the bad injector harness and found water to the door seal on the driver side. I believe the source of the leak is a busted cowl cover in conjunction with a loose firewall grommet. The car has not had shown any real leaks before, besides the occasional sunroof drain clog (once every few years), and there is not the usual staining on the headliner.

I need to pull the interior, ditch the carpet, clean the mold from the seats and interior bits, and clean all the electrical connections. I'm positive water infiltrated the electrical system as the new(ish) battery is completely dead. The battery was good a few weeks ago when I started her up to read codes and verify the injector harness was the fault.

The interior comes out tomorrow after work...
... all I wanted was to change out the injector harness and drive my Liesl.

Jake

 

[Problypropylene]

I had to deal with this when I bought my '03 wagon. It was in great shape other wise and a great deal, so I was willing to fix it all. It had been sitting for months and the floors were full of water.

Probably no need to ditch the carpet. Pull it out (actually not very hard, cut the piece behind/under the stereo/hvac controls to save yourself a bunch of time), and then you can spray it with vinegar and baking soda if it has mold/mildew and hose it off with soap and water. Much easier to clean outside of the car than inside. Do the same thing with the underlayment/insulation stuff. Then also clean all the floor metal with baking soda water to really kill it all. Your car will eventually smell better than ever once all the vinegar dries out, lol. You can use just baking soda water if you want to avoid vinegar smell.

My leak ended up being two places: Below the wipers as well as the drivers door.

The area below the wipers was full of pine needles, leaves, and mud (also from sitting for so long). Water can't drain out fast enough and it starts to find the path of least resistance which is the black box/cover thing above the pedals. Have someone spray the windsheild area with a hose and you may see drips coming down on the pedals. I don't think this is actually a problem with the gasket or anything, it's just not meant to have 3 inches of water or whatever on top of it.

Clean out that entire area and behind your fender liners while you're at it. Now water will drain away more or less immediately.

My second leak came from the driver's door. I kept finding water right on top of the lower door seal. And what appeared to be dripping from the door panel.

First I replaced some of the window regulator weather stripping and cleaned all the crud out of the doors. The wax coating stuff comes off in chunks and clogs the three drain holes in the door and will cause your doors to fill up with water if they can't drain.

This improved things, but I still found a little bit of water in the crack between the rubber gasket and the plastic trim piece. By design it should not be able to get that far into the gasket.

I had to adjust the hinges as well as the loop that the locking mechanism latches to. Other people have had this door adjustment problem (it can also cause excessive wind noise at highway speed), so I'm not the only one. I think the theory is that the seals are compressing over time, or vibration + slamming doors makes them loose over time. I had to adjust my door so much that the fender was no longer flush, so I also adjusted my fender and the paint lines on the bolts/washers showed that it had never been adjusted before, so I'm leaning towards the seals being compressed over time and losing a good seal.

Good luck. It was a frustrating time for me, but I figured it out and the car is nice and dry now. Take all the carpet and front seats out and check all gaskets and floor for wet spots after a rain or get someone to spray a hose on the spots you suspect, while you lay on the floor, until you find where the water is coming from. I didn't reinstall the carpet until I was 100% sure it wasn't leaking any more.

 

[Blacktree]

My Jetta had a leak in that electrical pass-through, below the wiper motor. The plastic "hood" had warped over time, creating a gap that water could easily flow through. I cleaned up the area, and gave the "hood" a healthy dose of silicone sealant. Problem solved!

 

[mk4mr]

I had a real problem with water filling my driver's floorboard in my 01' wagon. It is a non-sunroof car, so that obviously wasn't it. I finally found the rainwater to be coming in the back door. The water was running down the rear door window into the door interior, and coming into the car between the door shell and the window regulator panel. I had removed the regulator panel to repair a window that had come loose from the regulator, and the sticky sealer material was partially removed during the process and was no longer sealing at the bottom. I simply ran household bathroom caulk around the outside edge of the silver regulator panel in the door. This fixed my water problems. If you have ever had the regulator assembly out of the car, I'd suggest taking a look at that. I will allow water to run into the floorboard if that seal is compromised.

 

[dschultz]

More leak info

I have also been chasing leaks in my Jetta. it has been a constant battle.

I hope you don't mind adding my troubles to this thread.

I repaired the seal at the bottom of the window regulator/lock carrier on the front drivers door. The drain hole look ok. The bottom rubber gasket is only in fail condition. Is there a replacement part for that seal?

I had leaks into the interior from the cowl. I have cleaned leaves twice, removed lots of nice leaf mulch from the behind the inner fender liner.

I also glued some plastic mesh screen behind the vents on the cowl cover. It seems to help slow the buildup of leaves.

So I have a question, During heavy rain last night I left the car out to test my door repair. I didn't see any leaks at the door but noticed a few drops of water on the trim just behind the fuse access door. I had my windshield replaced two years ago, it seems like the only place water can get to the plastic around the fuse panel would be from the windshield near the A pillar.

Thoughts?

 

[Jake_S]

Thank you for this insight. From what I can tell, the water came down around the dead pedal/kick panel area. I have to replace the broken cowl cover, and will seal this up while it's accessible
.

My Jetta had a leak in that electrical pass-through, below the wiper motor. The plastic "hood" had warped over time, creating a gap that water could easily flow through. I cleaned up the area, and gave the "hood" a healthy dose of silicone sealant. Problem solved!

 

[tgray]

Just from experience... using silicone like is shown in the picture will do the job for a while but it eventually starts pulling away after a few years and leaks again. The best and right way was what I just did to my car with the silicone that started leaking again. Remove the wiper motor out of the way. Pull the cover of the wire connector box. Pull all the plug wires out of their positions and pull the wire harness back off the box. Remove the 2 small nuts holding it down and remove the plastic base of the box. Now you can really clean it up well and put a nice bead of a polyurethane or urethane based caulk to seal it up for good. Urethane based caulks don't deteriorate like silicone.