Having exhausted all of the usual suspects-
Roof seam above screen
Fan intake plenum filter cover
Screws holding filter cover, plenum trims and everything else in that area
and still getting a puddle in drivers footwell, but only when the wind or slope where car parked are in a certain direction, I've decided to rip into it and sort once and for all.
This is about as deep as you can get in the leak feed area:
Bit of damp in the screw area at 7 o clock so a definite suspect, but I was planning to pop out the whole plastic inlet bucket pictured and re-seal the gasket and screws. That would mean that any water entering the whole front box under the screen couldn't get anywhere except out through the drain gap at the two ends and would have no path under the plastic bucket into the fan duct.
Trouble is, every screw holding in the plastic bucket is rusted solid and won't hold a screwdriver. Only option will be to drill them out- a major PITA.
In the meantime, as 7 o clock screw is wet, water is still obviously getting in from the top so need to work on that as well.
I feel for you mark, you've practically rebuilt that car,, from reading back years ago the fan seal was a leak to look for, hope this is the last thing you have to deal with for a while..
Have you tried the old trick of tracing the leak with vegetable dyes of different colours ?
Don't drill out the screws (it will melt the plastic) try cutting a slot for a flat-blade driver with a little diamond disk in a dremel (if space allows)
- I could now go off on a whole "why didn't they use more stainless screws/bolts etc during assembly" tangent but won't as it won't help....
Chris- I thought I'd dealt with the leak, but it re-appeared last week. I knew the car was likely to be an ongoing project when I took it on, so haven't reached the limit of my patience with it yet, although I do hate repeating jobs. Didn't dig this deep into the leak previously though. This time the bloody thing will be watertight!
Dave- thanks for the tip, but Dremel won't fit. I have a large bag of new plastic push in screw fixings, and if the housing melts around the screw heads I'll just plastic weld in some washers!
There's no way you can stop water moving across the underneath of the metal plate once its got through the foam on the plastic plenum cover. Here's a pic of the other side, same as driver side with a large gap:
It can then drip where it likes eg straight down the throat of the intake.
So why don't they all leak where mine does?!
Orangebean wrote:
So why don't they all leak where mine does?!
Believe me when I say your be surprised how many do leak there, I've sealed up 4 of them out of 10 p38s.
I think it's down to how it's been parked over the years.
Yet another engineering wonder from LR..
no10chris wrote:
Orangebean wrote:
So why don't they all leak where mine does?!
Believe me when I say your be surprised how many do leak there, I've sealed up 4 of them out of 10 p38s.
I think it's down to how it's been parked over the years.
Yet another engineering wonder from LR..
I've fixed the picture link above.
I can't see how that gap can be sealed. Rain can just blow through the holes in the plenum cover (the ones without the crappy foam filter that disintegrates), through the gap and into the throat of the intake:
Unless I'm missing some foam:
I tried this a couple of months ago.
Water was dripping (flooding...) from the join between two air vent ducts above the OBD socket.
I stripped out the entire plenum cover as you have. I found that my pollen filter housing was pretty much underwater. Dried it out, removed all the debris and started putting it all back together. Siliconed every screw I could find. Siliconed the covers for the pollen filters. Replaced the foam and reseated the plenum cover and ensured as best I could that it was sealing well. I fitted new screws all along it and siliconed those too.
For good measure I cleaned out my AC drains and reseated the AC drain rubber pipe to remove a kink.
The bloody thing still leaks and my carpet is sodden every time it rains and to make things worse it started leaking through my interior light too! It only did that once though and I'm fairly sure it's unrelated to the water in the pollen filters :P
FWIW, I don't think you're missing any foam. Mine has the same uncovered holes in the plenum cover. There's also no clips to mount any foam to in that place. I think it makes the foam that is there pretty pointless. They want to keep crap out of there or they don't. Covering half of the holes is pointless.
I gave up trying to fix my leak.
It's a take the fans out job, I sealed them In with plenty of silicone, as for the plenum sponge, I found that a fine wire mesh sprayed black lasts for ever, memory serving me right, I permanently fixed some mesh over the extra holes with a few blobs of gripfill,,
RR, if you got water through your light, it's either the joint on roof silicon has come away, or sunroof. The roof joint has been covered here before, OB is the man to give you the link
And here it is RR :)
no10chris wrote:
It's a take the fans out job, I sealed them In with plenty of silicone,
Noooooooooooo!
I could have done that when I had the whole bloody dash out doing the heater refurb. Would have been easy then, not easy now...
Well that is handy info. Cheers!
I'd checked the sunroof but it was all dry up there. Blasted some air down the front drains just in case but couldn't reach the rear ones.
RutlandRover wrote:
Well that is handy info. Cheers!
I'd checked the sunroof but it was all dry up there. Blasted some air down the front drains just in case but couldn't reach the rear ones.
Careful blowing air down them, there's a joint that would pop apart if there blocked
I've got a slight water leak in the Ascot but I know exactly where from. The plastic bits of the sunroof mechanism had broken on both sides so needed looking at. Got replacement bits from a company called Bross Auto Parts based in Turkey who sell the bits on eBay. They appear to be 3D printed parts and needed a little fettling to get them to slide properly. Got the LH side done and working fine but took the RH runner off and bought it into the house to do it last night. Left the sunroof glass just sitting in the hole but as there's no runner on one side, it was sitting a bit lopsided. It rained last night.......
Is the water hot?
