leaks I can't solve...

ASSISTANCE Interior
1

I am working on a 91 (G2) integra that is great… except 3 things. For this post, I want to ask about leaks.

I thought it had a leak… over time, however, I’ve found out that is has… a lot.

What I’ve fixed:

many leaks having to do with the cowel (infamous passenger side leaks). I didn’t do the temp fix of replacing the faulty stock parts with more faulty stock parts – I fixed it permanently with liberal amounts of silicone caulking… and that even took me 4 times because each time I learned about a different area of the cowel that leaks. ugh! Anyway, that’s done.

a leak through the firewall, from the AC lines that come from the AC condenser box (I think that’s what it’s called). The rubber was never installed correctly (apparently from factory).

tail light leaks.

the sunroof drain tube (I had dislodged it when replacing the blower box).

the rear left drain tube was lose at the bottom, so I caulked it too.

OK, that lets you know where I’m coming from. Now, I still get water! in at least 3 areas (arggg!!!).

  1. passenger side floorboard… still! But only sometimes. Last week it rained several inches in one day and nothing… but another day, it rained about 1" in a day and there was about .25 inches of water. My only guess is the top rubber around the window sometimes gets between the glass and the car, leavign a gap where water can come it. Anyone have any other ideas, or any solutions to keep the window from shutting incorrectly?

  2. behind the driver seat. This one I’ve never seen before. It didn’t come from the roof, and there are no trails leading to it. my only guess is it is coming from the rear somehow, through the underfloor, and coming up through the tar stuff. Anybody have any other ideas? If I’m right, fixing the rear leak will fix this, too.

  3. a lot of water in the back. mostly back-left (maybe only coming from there, then flowing over to middle). Now, I fixed the bottom of the drain tube (the rear-left), and the top of it (and all the others) look pristine, are flexible, and solidly attached. I finally got in while someone ran water over the car and saw that it was coming from either outside the tube, and running down it, or it’s flowing into the body from in front of where the drain tube connects at the bottom. I also noticed that the drain tube at the top and bottom are of different sizes. Does it taper, or is there a connector somewhere that may have come off? Is there somewhere else where water can come in?

The third one is the worst by far. please help :frowning: I’ve googled, searched, and this one still stumps me.

2

passenger side floorboard no mater how many times I silicone it would leak sometimes.
I cut a plastic bottle in half making a U shape and covered the hole were the blower motor goes I then poor a bucket of water over it b4 i put it back together its dry and I still gets lots of air for the motor also…

3

sounds pretty much like what i was going to do just in case.

I was also going to clean the holes that the cover gets screwed into and use short bolts/nuts with rubber washers and a bit of rtv to keep the bolt water tight.
or just pull the bolts up through the holes and weld them in. /shrug
just tired of the leak and I’m not going to pay money for oem parts to fix it and have it fail again. I only like to fix things once.

4

[QUOTE=jurytherigger;2212984]
The third one is the worst by far. please help :frowning: I’ve googled, searched, and this one still stumps me.[/QUOTE]

someone else posted about the sunroof in another thread… http://forums.g2ic.com/showthread.php?208085-Ugh-the-dreaded-hatch-trunk-water-leaks…
said to pull down the rear part of the headliner and check the sunroof pan for rust holes in the corners.

might be worth checking, and while you are at it check the hoses coming from the sunroof too.
also check the nuts for the tail lights if you replaced the tail light gaskets, they may be due for a re-tighten like mine were.

also, check the floor pan plugs from under the car.
wifes car (celica) was getting water in the floor boards after driving, i just looked under the car and saw right away that the rubber plugs were missing.

5

well, for the cowl (or cowel?..) leak (passenger side floorboard, from blower box and areas close to it)…

actually, first of all, I modded mine under the cowl. I’ll post about it later because I’m still having issues with smell, but I put some wire mesh to keep out animals. The mesh covers the intake of the blower, as well as either side of the cowl, where it drains down (aka the entrance holes for the mice). It’s been at least a year and no more animals, so I highly recommend modding it first :wink: The sad part is that the second time I tore it all apart for the mice, I finaly figured it out… and I hadn’t yet figured out that it was the cowl that was leaking… so I had to tear it apart several times again after that.

but anyway, there are several places around the cowl that cause the same leak. Around the outside of the small cowl, which was originally a foam gasket. I siliconed that up first and thought I was fine… wrong. I tore it apart and found that it was leaking around the holes around those stupid plastic push fasteners that they love so much. I removed all of them and siliconed the crap out of those, too. It STILL leaked… so I tore it apart and did some testing and found that it was also leaking around the white rectangular pieces that the large cowl attaches to (with a different type of stupid push fasteners). I removed them, siliconed around the bottom, and stuck them back in. Now, finally, I have no leaks from the cowl. All the silicone holds in in great, and I haven’t had any issues with anything not fitting. I just made sure I always got off all the gaskets and/or silicone and cleaned all surfaces well before each application.

I ended up removing the entire headliner (a pain). I checked for corrosion and the drain tubes, and actually everything above the headliner looked absolutely pristine. There wasn’t any dirt or anything. The rubber for the tubes was very flexible and attached securely. I went ahead and modified my rear windshield squirter thingy by removing the rubber 90 degree adapter and adding a short length of rubber hose to more securely connect the nozzle to the fluid hose (I think it may have been leaking between the nozzle and that joint connector… I don’t like how it was designed). Anyway, I also cut about half an inch off the clear hose going into the little plastic hose adapter (the hose that comes from the fluid pump), because it had expanded over time and was no longer holding tight enough. It’s all secure now, and I had to do some flushing and cleaning as there was gunk in the line. apparently it hadn’t worked in a looong time hahaha

After all that I was going to check again when the friend who was helping me finally said that there was no way they’d be dumb enough to have an adapter going from the large drain tube from the sunroof to the small one. So he ran hos hand between the body and the inner sheet metal and sure enough… it was a different hose. Apparently I had reset the power antennae hose, and the sunroof hose was still off at the bottom! As annoyed as I was at myself for that, it was good news. He pushed that hose back in and we checked… and no more leak coming from there. :slight_smile:

But there is still another leak in the trunk. A very small one, but I want this thing sealed! no more moldy smell. lol The leak is around the middle of the back, from the general area of the trunk latch. Thanks for the link malformed, it gave me several things to check whenever it stops raining again. At some point a previous owner had caulked partially around the rear lights with silicone. I think I’ll remove them and recaulk around them and anything else I find back there.

6

ok… well… after another rain, it is still leaking in the trunk. now on both sides (and probably the middle, too).

After taking it back apart, I noticed that the sunroof tube and the drain boot have a significant difference in size (due to a design that didn’t properly allow for age), which causes leaking out the top of the boot whenever flow reaches a certain level (which isn’t very much). Same goes for the right (passenger) side.

So… I got a little more aggressive. I took out the antenna motor to make room for my hands, and took the boot out. I cleaned it and the end of the sunroof tube well, and then applied a liberal amount of silicone to the outside of the tube and the inside of the boot. I attached the boot to the tube (leaving it out of the boot hole in the car) and moved everything around a lot to make sure all surfaces were coated well. Then, I took half of a paper towel and put (a lot of) silicone on it. I smeared it all over to make it completely ‘wet’ with silicone, then wrapped that around the connection between the boot and tube (making sure it will line up correctly with the car). I left the boot out of the car hole, to all air dry. Once dried (tomorrow) I’ll insert it back in and test again. This should leave a permanent water-tight seal.

I did the same for the opposite side. I found out that a previous owner had found the leak on that side and had wrapped it with packaging tape lol. Needless to say, it didn’t work.

I’m also going to do the same for the antenna drain tube, as well as going around the base with silicone, as the motor no longer works.

If this doesn’t fix those leaks, they can stay. >,< Actually, I’ll probably just silicone up the sunroof… or add a drain hole in the trunk. :stuck_out_tongue:

7

OK… so… it still leaks. At least it isn’t from those places anymore…

I found two more places where water was coming in.

  1. Below the gas filler cap… there is a hole there that goes directly into the trunk (glad I haven’t spilled any gas in it!). Seriously, Acura, wtf? Anyway, I sealed that up.

  2. Where the wires come into the hatch. I slid up the rubber grommets, cleaned them well, and sealed them as well (silicone).

There are also very small cracks in the tar-like stuff that they used to seal around the body press welded joints and whatnot. I’m going to clean those up and silicone them as well.

They really should have let the engineers that designed the engines have a once over on the body, because this is ridiculous.

8

I siliconed all that up, and I noticed it is also leaking around the outside of the little vents that are near the boots for the rear sunroof drain tubes. So I caulked around that, too.

I then took off the rear lights and siliconed around the gaskets and surrounding area (Anything that looked like it could possibly leak). I then siliconed around the top of the lights (once I got them back on).

Anyway, I’m done. I didn’t even check to see if there were any more leaks. If there are any more, they officially win. :frowning:

9

holy crap man… sounds like my car… cept my leak is causing my rear seat and trunk to mold.

10

If your still having problems with the passenger side floor board, you may want to give this a check as it worked for me. If this is something you already did i apologize cause i dont really know what the parts are called as far as the a/c and heater parts. If you take off the passenger side bottom dash panel, youll see a white and black container and a metal piece connecting the two. Take it off. It apparently seals the two containers with foam attached to the metal piece that runs in between them. The foam on mine was old and deteriorating, and was soaked in water. I replaced it with some universal weatherstripping and a good amount of GOOP i had laying around, and it fixed my leak. Prior to this i had tried the OEM fix on the cowl, and then siliconed it after i still had water inside. It has been arouns 3 weeks since i replaced the foam on the metal piece, and it has been put to the test as we’ve had some nasty rain, and i have yet to have any water in the floorboard. It took my windows, wipers, and sunroof to stop working (which i suspect stemmed from the leak) for me to quit being lazy and fix it, so my suggestion is not to give up and keep trying to fix it. While i dont know if that was the source of my electrical problem, im sure as hell it didnt help it. This was also on a 91, i dont know if the setup differs between years. I hope this helps buddy, best of luck