Water leak under under inner door seal at outer top corners

[TTait]

Maybe its the seals I have, and for the life of me I can't tell you which ones they are - maybe Hervey - maybe we can figure it out from what they are doing.

Its the inner door seals 110044. What I'm seeing on this car is a combination of two things. The gap between the seal and the windshield trip is very tight on the left and the right, so water can't drain down the sides of the windshield and out under the door. The door seal seats low enough that there is no gap under it either it, the seal completely fills the gap between the body and the windshield trim and makes it watertight so water collects up at the roof which is well sealed, so it pools up.

The weak point in that seal, particularly when going around a turn is that water can get under the inner seal when it makes the 90 degree turn from behind the windshield to down the side of the windshield. The radius there is tight enough and the fiberglass is thick enough that the seal doesn't sit perfectly at this point.

My first question is - does this happen because I may have purchased the wrong inner door seal from the wrong vendor?

Should I do more grinding on the underbody to try to get the seal to fit better around that 90 degree turn?

Should I be trying to get the inner seal to sit higher on the body as it runs down the side of the windshield to create a channel under the rubber for drainage?

I have a fiberglass headliner set so the water often makes its way on top of that and ends up distributed everywhere, not just at the A pillar trim.

Is this happening to others, and are there good fixes? I live in Southern California and its sometimes possible to avoid driving in the rain, but it happens even when washing the car, so fixing it would really be nice. What to people in Seattle do? Toby?

Tom

[Rich]

On ours with the 2018 DMCH inner door seals and even with prior seal designs there was always enough x-section open area at and beneath the seal body to drain the roof water. Take a look up from the bottom of the A-pillar to be sure you see the same thing.

Your problem may not be improper drainage but rather a bad headliner-seal installation.

What might actually be happening is some wicking of a thin layer of water that is in the drain area at the top of the A-pillar into excess headliner fabric that mistakenly was left too long when it was trimmed. When new headliners are installed it's very important to trim the edge fabric back so it does not wrap very far over the flange of the door jamb. No more than 2-3mm is a good rule. I've seen several cars with headliner water stains and even water dripping onto the seat after a storm because somebody did a poor headliner replacement job - headliner fabric not properly trimmed back.

Pull off the door seals and make sure there's no more than a 2 mm of headliner fabric wrapped over that flange.

If you really see water pooling up in the roof box area due to a plugging situation down the A-piilars let us know. It's easy enough to test for that.

[Rich]

Another thing to check. If you pull up the inner sear along the A-pillar take a look along the gutter between the windshield frame and the seal flange to see if there's dirt, mud or debris jammed in that gap, enough to block water flow. If so then clean it out and reinstall the seal.

[TTait]

"Your problem may not be improper drainage but rather a bad headliner-seal installation."

It's not that, I wasn't getting stains at the corner, the water was coming in and collecting on top of the fiberglass headliner board and then draining at the map light. I had the headliner out by the time I found the problem anyway.

I had removed the headliner and replaced the seals and put the car in the driveway and had my son attack the car with a garden hose. It took a long time to find the issue because I have worked hard previously to thoroughly seal the roof and windshield well before to try to fix this. For 5 solid minutes of deluge and hard spray I could not find a leak. It only happens in a hard rain or at the carwash, when there is lots of water.

It finally revealed itself when there was a lot of water in the roof area and then he put a lot more into either front corner. As would happen at the carwash or when driving in a hard rain and making a turn when everything on the roof sloshes to one front corner and gets trapped there. Suddenly it was pouring in under the seal.

"Another thing to check. If you pull up the inner sear along the A-pillar take a look along the gutter between the windshield frame and the seal flange to see if there's dirt, mud or debris jammed in that gap, enough to block water flow. If so then clean it out and reinstall the seal."

It's really clean, but it chokes down so tight that it could never dissipate the sudden influx of say a pint of water that all sloshed to the front right or front left corner if turning and braking slightly at the same time (I do tend to slow down while making a turn in the hard rain). There may be s slight gap there, but I'm never going to get it open enough to create a large enough channel for all the water. See photo.

65156

What I think I need to focus on is to prevent water from coming under the seal.

What I think I'm going to try then is making sure I trim the new headliner as you said (the old one was correct but tired) and bring it over the top and then down a few mm. Then I'll run about an 1/4" bead of clear silicon just below it on the outside lip of the fiberglass along the top of the door opening, around the curve and down the side of the windshield/A Pillar until the gap closes up, and then install the seal down onto that. Hopefully by giving a moderate but removable seal between the fiberglass and the outer bottom lip of the weatherstrip base clip it will be enough to withstand the low pressure slosh of a pint of water the next time water briefly collects in that area.

Thoughts?

[Rich]

Good update on the symptoms.

That's an interesting photo. It looks like your seal has a massively-bent U-channel in it at the top of the A-pillar. What I call the U-channel is made up of the bottom of the seal and the two metal-mesh reinforced legs that grab onto the fiberglass flange. Both legs of the U-channel should be parallel to each other and to the mounting flange on the body tub. Since I can see both legs peeking out from behind the bulb of the seal in that photo something's not right.

The way the seal leg on the inside radius of that bend is distorted it may indeed be damming up water if that leg is sealed hard to the windshield section. There could be space below it for some water to flow down but it's not correct.

Pull at least that section of the seal away from the flange and see if the U-channel legs are parallel to each other like they are along some straight edges of the door opening. If not you can try bending the inner leg back by hand, then reinstalling. You also can try taking the seal off entirely, moving it 8-10 inches further in one direction or the other to get a fresh, straight section at that corner. Work your way around in both directions to re-mount the seal.

Your silicone proposal attacks the seal-door water leak, not the water-too-deep-at-top-of-A-pillar problem. If the water drains the way it's meant to then the seal has an easier job. Maybe fix the seal legs first or replace the seal with a known-good seal first. The silicone idea might be a backup idea.

[David T]

One cause of water to enter the cabin in that area is if the outer door seals, in particular the upper ones between the door and the tee panel, are missing or torn. If too much water gets into that channel it will overflow and leak inside.