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Rain leak into car. Help!!!

mandryka

pfm Member
It's a Nissan Micra, just 18K miles on the clock. Rainwater collects in spare tire well, and can accumulate down to foot-well on from passenger seat.

Nissan dealership thought it was the gaskets on tail lights, but the problem persists.

A local mechanic thought he found a hole in a seam on the bodywork, he welded it. The problem persists.

I really don't know what to do next (other than get rid of the car!) Any suggestions very much appreciated.
 
Easy, if time consuming. Fold the seats down and crawl in the back. Get a helper to water the car with a watering can. Look for the leaks. It may be the lights, it often is.
Then seal it with automotive sealant. You don't need to weld these things, your mechanic is mad.
Short term fix, drill a small hole in the spare wheel well, watch out for what's on the other side, this will allow the boot to dry out at least.
Try the owners' groups on the 'net, some cars have a repeating problem. The Mondeo I had had a problem with leaking doors, easy fix. Just re-glue and reseal the door card seals.
You can buy a product called seek and seal, it's a thin sealant that you put on things like window seals if there is a small leak. It goes into the crack via capillary action and then dries. You find the leak by the watering can method I talked about above.
I have sealed around leaking rear lights with acrylic bathroom sealant. Water it down until it is like paint, paint it on the seals around the lights. Let it dry. Scrape off the excess with a fingernail, it will go into any cracks and seal them up.
 
Check that the windows are not coming unglued. I had this with my Volvo and the adhesive on the front windscreen had started to let go along the top edge resulting in water getting in.
 
Had a similar issue with a small Citroen, garage used a smoke machine which filled the inside of car and revealed a small area of damage to a rear window seal, after item was resealed test was repeated and fault cleared, after fully drying the car interior the fault didn't return.
 
Had a similar issue with a small Citroen, garage used a smoke machine which filled the inside of car and revealed a small area of damage to a rear window seal, after item was resealed test was repeated and fault cleared, after fully drying the car interior the fault didn't return.
Clever!
 
Had a similar issue with a small Citroen, garage used a smoke machine which filled the inside of car and revealed a small area of damage to a rear window seal, after item was resealed test was repeated and fault cleared, after fully drying the car interior the fault didn't return.
That's interesting.
 
I would check behind the door car on rear hatch. If it is wet in there check drains at bottom of hatch.
 
The smoke trick is clever. Nice and quick, which is why they do it no doubt. The watering can is a time consuming alternative.

Bear in mind that water will seep for a long way. I once had a leak I couldn't fix, so I crawled into the boot on a rainy day and laid there waiting for a drip. A drop appeared in the middle of a painted panel. Obviously dew, so I wiped it off. It came back. I wiped it again. Another drop. It turns out that the water was coming under the mastic and travelling at least 30-40 cm underneath it before popping out in the middle of the panel. You would never have imagined this, it had been into garages over and over again. I resealed the light and it was done.
 
Edd China (Wheeler Dealers) used the smoke generator trick on an Aston Martin DB7 that had water ingress. It worked a treat.
 
Best of luck - my wife's car (Suzuki SX4), after 3 years of no problem, started to suffer from a pool of water in the rear nearside passenger footwell.
Much investigation by myself and garage failed to show the cause, which appeared at apparently random intervals.
We lived with it for a while but eventually traded it in for something else. I'm not sure if the dealer disclosed the problem to the next owner or maybe just passed it on 'through the trade'.
 
It's a Nissan Micra, just 18K miles on the clock. Rainwater collects in spare tire well, and can accumulate down to foot-well on from passenger seat.

Nissan dealership thought it was the gaskets on tail lights, but the problem persists.

A local mechanic thought he found a hole in a seam on the bodywork, he welded it. The problem persists.

I really don't know what to do next (other than get rid of the car!) Any suggestions very much appreciated.

Send a question to Honest John site. He seems to know a lot about these sort of problems.
 
Mumble years ago a friend of mine owned an MGA. The 'pram top' leaked like a goodun'. So he drilled some holes in the floor to let the water out again. :)

Being in the passenger's seat when it was raining used to mean wearing a raincoat.

Much less fun than another friend's 'Midget' when I had to share the passenger's seat with a lovely lady.... 8-]
 
It's extraordinary how common this problem seems to be, and yet no one is offering specialist diagnostic services. There is someone based in Chelmsford, but nothing else.
 
Superb idea - smoke. You can buy pellets from a good plumbing and heating supplier, although I would assume that you'd need several to test a car rather than the draught up a chimney, which is what they are intended for.

A standard smoke machine is likely to be a bad idea - they don't actually produce smoke (or they didn't when a friend ran a disco), they work(ed) like e-cigs but with propylene glycol(????), which produces an oily mist, not smoke. Everything would get an oily coating if they still work like that.

My diesel Megane has a similar problem, one that gets plenty of press online, although I found no accurate description of the cause - I had to find that myself. In the case of the Megane, only the diesel, the bulkhead at the base of the windscreen forms a trough. That trough is fitted with a smallish drain at each side but it drains via a pipe that is fitted behind the wheel arch liner. That pipe clogs, stops draining, allows the bulkhead to fill to a depth so that water runs back through the heater intake and wicks from there through the whole car as far back as the rear seats.

A previous petrol Megane had a spare wheel well that flooded, through a tiny leak where the rear light cluster did not seal properly - bathroom silicone sealed that.
 
It's extraordinary how common this problem seems to be, and yet no one is offering specialist diagnostic services. There is someone based in Chelmsford, but nothing else.
It's not extraordinary at all, it's a simple fault that you can diagnose with a watering can and fix with widely available sealant. Cars often leak, in 99% of cases it's a simple repair. I've had it on most (nearly all?) of mine at some point.
 
In the case of the Megane, only the diesel, the bulkhead at the base of the windscreen forms a trough. That trough is fitted with a smallish drain at each side but it drains via a pipe that is fitted behind the wheel arch liner. That pipe clogs, stops draining, allows the bulkhead to fill
This is familiar, I had this on an 80's Fiesta. A poke with a screwdriver fixed it. The Mazda MX5 had similar at the rear, in that case the leak went into the rear arches and caused corrosion and eventually wet carpets too.

A previous petrol Megane had a spare wheel well that flooded, through a tiny leak where the rear light cluster did not seal properly - bathroom silicone sealed that.
Yes, that's the first place I look when I have a wet boot.
 
This is familiar, I had this on an 80's Fiesta. A poke with a screwdriver fixed it. The Mazda MX5 had similar at the rear, in that case the leak went into the rear arches and caused corrosion and eventually wet carpets too.

The hassle with the Megane is that you can see absolutely nothing as it is all hidden under trim, even the lake isn't at all obvious. To get to the drains, you have to remove the whole wiper assemblies, two trim panels, one each side of the windscreen, then the trim across the base of the windscreen. One drain is easily "poked" clear, the other is not as something like the wiper motor(???) partially obscures it. You can't see or easily access the drain pipes, but I'd bet that they are corrugated, making blockages more likely and worse to clear.
 
Smoke generator works really well for many uses but expensive to buy for single use. I think mine was about £500 many years ago. Some garages have them but because many people do not feel they should pay for diagnosis are not commonly found.
Two people, liquid soap and an airline can be good. Spray dilute liquid soap around seams, very gently blow with airline, from inside and out, look for bubbles. It is advisable to remove carpets trim etc to make everything as visible as possible.
If you are going to spray with water I would use a hose to force water into/around seams, seals and crevices. It usually makes leaks easier to find because the evidence appears faster.
Blocked drains, Sunroof and drains, rear lights, rear washer ( VWs fill up because the feed for the rear washer runs through the middle of the wiper motor) or wiper, door window seals( water gets past and drains into the vehicle from the doors), window seals, door seals, aerials etc etc etc are all common areas. If water can get in it will.
It might cost you an hours labour but a garage with a smoke machine should be your friend.
 
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