When it Rains, it Pours

Literally. In my car that is...

I've been working on finding the elusive leak in my car for some time now. It has been slow going though--Partly due to my schedule, and partly due to weather.

After I replaced the slightly leaking heater core this last summer, quite a while went by (it didn't rain!) before I found out that there was more to it than the heater core. It didn't rain much overnight, but it was enough to cause water to drip out of the heater onto the passenger floor. It had been just long enough after the repair that I had forgotten about it and was quite mad to find it still leaking.

Then I worked on it a month or so ago with a little help from my brother, using automotive seam sealer to re-seal the body seam area on the passenger side below the windshield. That involved partially removing the passenger side front fender as well. After that I had to wait quite a while again for the weather to cooperate and dump enough rain for me to know whether or not my repair worked.

Again it didn't.

The first morning it rained after that was a while afterwards, and I had almost forgotten about it. It really wasn't much of a rain so I didn't know what it would do. I was halfway to work when it dumped some water out onto the floor.

I was pretty pissed of course, and kinda pushed it out of my mind for a while. After all, it was summer. A few days ago I decided I was going to give it another go and completely sealed every body seam all the way across the car under the windshield area. That meant removing all the windshield wiper linkage and partially removing the driver's side fender this time. My repair timing was mostly due to the fact that real rain was predicted last night.

This morning I got in my car, and just to be safe, I removed the heater motor so it wouldn't get wet. Luckily it's just a snap-in thing so it's easy to pop back out with no tools. I went down the driveway, turning left onto the little street in front of my place. I was instantly greeted by a gushing sound. I turned on the dome light and witnessed a flood of water dumping onto the passenger floor. I mean a LOT of water. After all, it had to be a lot of water for me to hear it...

Obviously, my repairs didn't work because none of the repairs actually were the problem. That effectively eliminated most everything as the culprit. That leaves only one possible thing that could be causing it.

The windshield.

Now I get to figure out how to reseal a windshield. It was replaced about 5 years ago, and obviously their repair was only good for 5 years. There are two ways to fix such a problem: The right way (having someone
remove and replace the windshield) and the easy way (using some sort of sealer and hoping to get it injected into the right areas).

At least now I know what the problem is.