Water on front seats

Technical Area Body, Interior & Styling
2

I thought I’d solved this one but it seems like it’s still an issue. 

Granted it’s not a huge amount of water - maybe a teaspoon full both sides, and it’s rained all night and this morning fairly heavily - but I’m getting water ingress by the striker plates and dripping onto the front seats.

It seems to be coming in by the striker plate somewhere, and then travelling along the plastic roof wedge cover and dripping down from there. The wedges seem in OK condition as do the striker plates (apart from a missing screw on the driver’s side which I’ve remediated with a replacement screw from MX5Parts). 

Thankfully yesterday I put Neoprene covers on the car seats for the moment to protect them till I can work out how to fix the issue where the actual ingress point is, although I get the feeling this may have been happening for a while as the metal square roof frame under the plastic roof wedge on the driver’s side looks a tiny bit corroded. 

Any ideas / clues of where I can look? The roof looks in good condition, closes fine and has no obvious cracks. Wierdly I’ve driven it in pretty heavy driving rain and had no water come in at all - it only seems to happen when it’s parked. (My drive is at a slight angle (think 2 or 3 degrees incline - enough that I can’t reliably check my oil on my drive and have to move the car onto the road for a bit to do so) - and it happens whichever way round I park it). 

 

3

I’m  not sure what the roof wedge is guessing the locating points either side.

May I suggest you thoroughly clean every rubber seal on the hood including on the header strip (across the top of the windscreen) then treat with a rubber conditioner like autoglym and see how it goes.

4

I assume that the issue has to be because there is an incomplete seal between the roof and the rubber it butts up to at the top of the windscreen.

This can only be due to rubber damage or roof catch adjustment.

Not familiar with the MK3 roof catch but just had a look at some pictures. There does not appear to be the plastic nipple covers that you get on the MK1 - Mk2.5. These crack/break away and cause problems - one thing less to worry about on your car.

There appears to be a threaded adjuster on the catch. Check the tension of the catches and tightness of the roof to rubber seal connection. There should be some tension when closing the roof and operating the catches. Clean everything up and adjust the catch tensioners a little - feel sure this will stop the water getting in.         

5

Thank you all for your help so far. Much appreciated!

The roof isn’t loose per-se - it definitely butts up and compresses the seal at the top of the windscreen. I’ve also checked the rubber and it still feels soft and pliable, no obvious cracks.

As I’ve only had the car a week, even though it was valeted very well before I got it, I’m assuming they may not have cleaned out the channels and the rubber seal properly. I’ve ordered some autoglym rubber conditioner anyway from Amazon so I’ll give the rubber a good once over once it’s dry later this week (cross fingers it looks like no more rain this week after this afternoon!)

 

So whilst it’s still raining, I’ve gone to the car to investigate a bit further. 

So here is where it’s dripping from;

The windscreen is on the left, the plastic top left is the sunvisor, the drivers side window is at the bottom and the hood is top right.

And the location of the drip is the same for both passenger and driver’s side.

Further investigation, and removing the cover plates, shows there’s a rubber seal underneath this which is at the front corner of the top of the window, on the inside;

This is the driver’s side - you can see the corrosion on the metal which is usually covered by the plastic protector.

And the same on the passenger side;

The arrows indicate where the drips were coming from. Pulling the seal down, it looks like it’s full of water - so the water is dripping out of this seal, along the plastic covers and down onto the edge of the seats.

This rubber seal seems to be actually attached to the hood itself - where should that drain to? It can’t go forward as it’s a solid end - so as far as I can tell, it could only ever drain towards the rear of the car somehow - down the inside of the seal. 

So it doesn’t seem to be the tension of the roof per-se (i.e. the seal at the windscreen) but something to do with the side drains?

Any clues or ideas?

6

To be within specification, the gap along the front edge of the roof and the actual windscreen header is 4-8mm? Adjusting is nowhere near as straightforward as on a mk1/mk2? Thank god there’s only one to adjust!  Having released the clamp, you will see two screws, one either side of the hook, which need removing. A “pin” goes through this same area and is secured with an external circlip on the passenger side? This clip needs to be carefully removed, a small flat head screwdriver does the trick, working round gently to free it off for reuse later. This “pin” also holds one end of the tension spring which also needs releasing. Careful here as if the other end pops off, you’ll spend half an hour trying to see where it fits back on?  A plastic cap over the hooks of the clamp can now be removed carefully, this reveals two clamp pieces (held in alignment by all the gubbins you’ve just removed) and the the actual adjuster? Sitting in the car, looking up at all this, the adjuster winds anti-clockwise to release the tension and clockwise to increase it? Bit of trial and error here depending on how much is required? Interestingly, as there is only one clamp, too much tension, which you might think is better in clamping the hood, can make the front edge of the hood, slightly raise up at the corners? Not sure this is your problem but thought it worth mentioning? Having adjusted your catch, everything goes back in reverse (hopefully). A really small pair of circlip pliers can help in reinstalling the circlip onto the pin? No need to take off the plastic surround to the hood clamp either?

Barrie

7

The windscreen was just about 8-9mm gap (although it was sealing ok, it may have been the edges that were just out of tolerance)

So I did four things;

1: Loosened off the 4x10mm torx bolts, two either side, for the two strike plates for the locators either side of the roof, making the strike plates loose.

2: Tightened the roof to make the gap 5mm (two and a half full turns clockwise) 

3: Closed the roof and re-tightened the torx bolts for the edge locators.

4: Used Autoglym Vinyl and Rubber to give the seals a good clean and re-proof.

 

We’ve had a couple of downpours and I’ve even given it a wash with the hose and so far, it’s dry! So I’ll keep my fingers crossed it’s worked :slight_smile:

Thank you all for your help - it’s much appreciated.