Water ingress

dab996 · Feb 13, 2023

I have a 99 996 C2 with sunroof, owned almost from new and the reason for mentioning this, unfortunately the car lives outside in a dense tree lined road, so tree sap blocking the drainage holes has been a major issue over the years and to further compound the issue, the car has seen very little use since the arrival of a new one in 2016. The car has been covered since 2016 (mainly summer and when it rains) but the recent deluge has meant that no amount of car cover is going to prevent water ingress, as experienced with both rear buckets and footwells sodden. I have now removed the entire rear carpets/seats back to bare metal and I am going to have the rear drainage holes in the sunroof checked again but I noticed that both rear quarter windows have play in them, In that I can apply pressure and move them, which suggests the bonding has failed rendering the seals useless. I took the car to my Indie, who agreed that the water ingress was likely to be the rear quarter windows rather than the drainage holes given these were addressed a couple of years back and the car is primarily covered. I contacted Richard Hamilton who hadn't come across this issue, hence my posting to ask for advice to see if anyone else has experienced this issue with the rear quarter windows and if so resolving the issue. I would also like to address and ideally replace the sunroof seal, front windows and rear side window seals together with main rear window seal and should be grateful for advice/recommendations of where to get this done?

Thank you in advance.
Darren

andywill · Feb 13, 2023

Hi Darren.
I’m pretty sure replacing all the seals should resolve the issues, hopefully when tackling these jobs you won’t find any problems in regards to corrosion in these areas, but you need to prepare yourself just on case.
The car being unused in the heat waves and cold spells we’ve had will not for the window seals of a 23year old car any favours, With regards to who does the work (indy or bodyshop) whereabouts in the country are you? if you contact your local regional organiser they may be able to guide you.
But also make sure all drainage holes are cleaned.
Good luck
Regards Andy

dab996 · Feb 13, 2023

Hi Andy,

Appreciate the heads up and yes, will definitely get the drainage holes checked again. I'm based in Bristol.

Sp1ke · Mar 3, 2023

I had a leak from the rear of the sunroof mechanism where the drainage tubes connect to it. in my cases the tubes were not blocked, the leak was at the point the rear drainage tubes join to connectors on the rear of the sunroof mechanism. I DIY'd a fix by removing the connectors, cleaned them up & replaced with fresh sealant. This has lasted about 3 years to date.

Some details & pics here: http://911uk.com/viewtopic.php?t=140094

You might want to try hosing the car down with someone sat inside to see if you can reproduce the issue to confirm the window seals are the cause. Just be mindful to use a hose rather than a pressure washer, as the latter would be a much higher volume of water than heavy rain, so you might induce a "false positive" by concentrating a high pressure washer on one area.