dom069 - 'My Mk4 1.8T'

[dom]

Ok, so the car currently looks like this:



Since I bought the car there has been the tell tale smell of a leak in the car, the other day I noticed water dripping from the spare tyre well so pulled the spare wheel out to find a puddle of water. Initially I thought that the culprit was a hole on the boot floor, which I'm assuming should be plugged with something?



After having a search on ukmkiv's I stumbled across this thread:

http://uk-mkivs.net/forums/p/51109/392618.aspx

I had a spare afternoon so decided to have a look at the vents mentioned in the thread, I whipped the rear lights out and the bumper off and had a poke around. It is worth noting that the rear light seals look pretty good, so I'm going to rule them out. The drivers side vent looked ok:



The passenger side looked a little worse:





I took the passenger one out, split the plastic bits apart and reattached the little flaps. Whilst it was out I had a look into the hole that the vent was fitted in and saw this





Anyway, put the vent back in:



And sealed both sides with a nice thick layer of silicone sealant:



We'll see how that holds up, I don't have a sunroof so that is ruled out, since I have dewipered the rear I have disconnected the hose for the washer from the water bottle so that cannot be the problem

I also suspect that the car has been rear ended on the passenger quarter sometime in the past, it all looks a little bit dented around the vent/under the rear light:







In comparison the drivers side is perfectly smooth

[dom]

With the help of a mate stripped the trim & carpet out of the boot and investigated possible sources for leakage, the light seal seemed to be letting a small amount of water in so we made up a second gasket & attached that to the original one which has hopefully fixed that.

There was no other obvious source of a leak though, the majority of the boot floor was covered in dust which would suggest that on water had ran over it recently

This only leaves the bungs in the boot floor, it appeared that they had been removed & refitted in the past so we prised them out ran a bead of sealant around the edge and refitted them, hopefully with a more substantial seal. If that doesn't solve it I'm really stumped

I don't have a sunroof so the drainage things in the doors aren't going to be an issue, i've checked the pollen filter & housing and it is all dry

Anyway, I also managed to fit the new N75 'J' valve this evening and it has solved the slight surging I was getting in the higher gears, the power delivery is even smoother than before



It is a horrible brown colour though

[dom]

Well re-sealing the vents did not solve the problem, stripped the rear out again this evening and got the pressure washer on it. Water is p!ssing in through the boot seal along the bottom of the boot, especially the n/s. It looks like the back panel is sitting too far into the boot so the seal isn't being made correctly when the boot is closed

Going to take a sledgehammer to it on Sunday to see if I can knock it back out, got a panel beater mate coming over to help out so hopefully problem will be solved soon