Coupe door seal replacement - water leaks

[Jon441cc]

Good work Paul, i agree with Nuvo on this one, bound to be to the big problem for any coupe at some point in its life.

Group buy on door seals and rubber Triangles me thinks at the right price anyway

[Nuvo]

And from this day forth that this all too common fate shall be referred to as the "cursed black triangle of watery death". This common ill will be sure to strike fear in the hearts of every coupe owner across the land.

[Error404]

/\ what he said

Mine is leaking in via the black triangle trim area on my drivers side

[nigelm]

Coupe door seal fix

Congratulations Paul,

What does the extra bit of seal look like and where does it go please? It's probably me being dense.
Perhaps those of us without a spare seal could replicate it with some other rubber?

Thanks,
Nigel

[S2central.net]

WIth the 'new' seal fitted it was time for the hosepipe test and it was almost perfect... still a trace of water getting in at top of A-pillar and making its way onto inner side of seal and into the cabin. This proves at least that I was initially on the right track.

There is a couple of bits of trim on the actual door near the mirror that help form the seal to the upper part of doorpost - these look a bit worse for wear and really need to be renewed. However, I felt that reducing the gap between that and the door seal had to make an improvement.

I carefully sliced out a section of the old door seal and inserted to the area where the door trim meets the doorpost. The seal peels back easily to accomodate this extra bit being slid in.

179 and 181 show this pretty well... 181 shows just how far the water ingress gets - before the fix the water came further inboard on that seal and made its way inside.

Now its all lovely and dry inside - pic 180 taken after 30 mins of full hose action

[S2central.net]

172 - Note foam block at top left of doorway... this is where I started fitting the new seal. Its a bit fiddly to start with but once you get a little grip in the roof section it takes the weight enough that you can start to work into the corner and B-pillar

176 - On the roof section I found that setting in the seal at the lower edge first then squeezing the upper section in with a plastic trim tool was a good method... something with a good sturdy thin edge - but not so sharp you risk cutting anything

[S2central.net]

I sourced a 2nd hand door seal - from a forum hero in Skye (name to be inserted when I can remember) - no cost to me which was fantastic. It sat in the garage for months but yesterday I finally got round to fitting it...

Removal of the old one was easy enough though I paid some attention to the B-pillar and roof area to see just how it was located so snugly.

When I had the old one off I had to remove the remnants of gutter sealant as the door seal needed to be fitted onto a dry/clean surface. I used POR15 solvent to quickly remove any old sealer. Do not get this on plastic though !

Then I noticed that two rivets were broken/hanging out of doorway trim - one at the roof and one at the front screen. I fitted two new rivets of a good size - lucky.

170 - half a dead rivet... no clue why this weakened so

171 - new one installed towards top of windscreen

[Rusty]

I have put some pieces of tape at a 45deg angle to teh door seal to direct the flow of water away from the interior. This has worked well. I would also suggest adjusting the door seals and adding a bead of black sealant to them, parallel with the top face, to direct any water that gets past the top seal away from the door shut. I have done this with tape and again its' worked quite well. HTH

[S2central.net]

Much time passed and my car interior was looking like a botulism factory with some wonderful fungal creations. I couldn't bring myself to photograph such a hideous sight so sorry about that... Fortunately for me it all washed off a treat with AG interior / fabric shampoo.

[S2central.net]

On further investigation the top part of the door seal at the A-pillar was not fitted tightly as a clamp clip had broken off. I replaced this along with the 'squishy' pad that fills the gap there. Still no joy.

My attention was then turned to the windscreen and I used a lot of 'Captain Tolleys Creeping Crack Cure' to make sure it was watertight. But still no joy.

Next I resorted to injecting some of that gutter sealant into the door seal as an attempt to tighten it up and prevent water ingress. This actually made things worse as I was soon getting water onto the drivers seat.

[S2central.net]

In an attempt to try and tidy up loose ends of various threads about mine and other folks Coupe water leaks - here is an attempt at a sticky thread to describe process of changing the door seal.

By way of quick history - I was getting water ingress in the driver side footwell. Most of this was coming from a damaged grommet on the cable for the bonnet release that travels up UK drivers side rain tray - near the fusebox. I used some gutter sealant to effect a good repair on this. This stuff stays nice and flexible - it doesn't harden or set like a glue or silcone based stuff.

However - that was not the full story.

I was still getting water in at bottom of A-pillar. The attached pic is a mild example of where it appeared inside the car. Look just right of the left trim clip... you can see by the rust on the procon cable tube that a fair amount of water had been creeping in for a while.

The carpet was salvagable but I had to throw out the underlay foam/fiber stuff.