Water leaks on the driver's side

[ColonelPanic]

Ahh, finally I get to post about a nasty Vibe problem, only this time it isn't my car. My buddy (who never has the time to come here and ask lol) has an '03 base. He called me tonight and mentioned he has a significant amount of water pooled on top of the carpet on the driver's side rear. Actually at one point in time, it had frozen. The driver's side front carpet is also soaked.If it were the passenger side, I'd check the A/C drain. But driver's side? I'm going to see if I can cruise by his place tomorrow to scope it out. Only things I can think of would be the moonroof drain, and possibly the missing body plugs. But I'm not sure the missing plug would cause the front floor to be soaked...I'll keep you guys posted. If you have any suggestions, let me know. Yes, I know, I have searched. But the driver's side soaked carpet doesn't seem to come up too often.Hopefully his extended warranty would take care of it (he doesn't have one through GM.) Not sure though, my GM warranty doesn't appear to cover water leaks. So we may be on our own for this one.

[scherry2]

I would venture to guess that it is the sunroof drain or you might want to check all the boots on the firewall under the hood. it seems more like the sunroof hose to me and it might even be where the hose exits the body at the left kick pad. heck, I'd take the kick panel off and the sill plate maybe even the a pillar and then go to the car wash, the carpet then can be pulled back. let us know what you come up with.

[joatmon]

when I saw you had posted this thread I thought you must be about to buy a gun and put that car out of it's misery, so it was good news that it wasn't your Vibe this time.Maybe a door seal, any extra wind noise in his car?

[ColonelPanic]

Quote, originally posted by joatmon »when I saw you had posted this thread I thought you must be about to buy a gun and put that car out of it's misery, so it was good news that it wasn't your Vibe this time.(removed)! I couldn't do that though, I love the Vibe too much. Quote »Maybe a door seal, any extra wind noise in his car?He hasn't complained of anything. Then again, he doesn't quite pay any attention to things like that, he's of the "turn the radio up and forget about it" sort. Scherry2, thanks for the tips there too... I'll try to get out there tomorrow and tear into that thing to see what's going on. I'll report back later.

[jonathonbarton]

Funny thing... I had that exact same problem. Easier to diagnose and correct, though.Mine was from leaving 2 cans of diet coke on the driver's rear floor in freezing weather...*DOH*

[ColonelPanic]

LOL! That'll do it! I've been a bad friend to my buddy, still haven't made it out there to investigate the issues with his Vibe.

[ColonelPanic]

Okay, I'm still a miserable excuse for a friend. He finally got his car in the dealer today (er, Friday) and here's what they found:In a nutshell: "Hmm, we DO see that the floor mat is FROZEN to the floor, but we can't test where the leak is coming from because it is too cold. You'll have to come back. And that's not going to be covered under your extended warranty."So, I'm going to take over my parent's nice warm heated garage one day this weekend and figure out what's going on. Checking for missing body plugs underneath first, and also may take off the 'A' pillar trim to see if perhaps the water is running down from there somehow. Who knows what we'll end up doing to the thing. If we do have to fix something, it'll probably involve duct tape. I hope for his sake, it is something stupid like a missing body plug... And not a windshield leak, moonroof leak, whatever. I'll post pics!

[ragingfish]

I'm trying to remember where the moonroof drains ran in front...I know the two rear ones go down between the quarter windows and the hatch...the fronts are escaping me...I know they don't go down the A-pillars...just wires back there...so perhaps all the drains route out the rear...I might pull down my headliner tomorrow to do some reworking...if I do, I'll be sure to get pics for ya...

[ColonelPanic]

Sweet! If you're working around the area, do snap a couple. Not sure if the water is coming from above or below, so I figured we'd pull of some trim and look around to see where any water may have been. Probably isn't the case but you never know.One thing I'm thinking -- definitely going to crawl under his car and see if the shipping plugs have been installed. If not, those suckers are getting duct tape over the holes and he needs to go back to the dealer and b___h at those guys...http://service.gm.com/gmtechli...tory1Quote »Water Leaking on the Front Passenger Carpeting -- Owners may comment that the passenger’s front carpeting gets wet. The source of the leak may be a disconnected HVAC evaporator drain tube. To correct the condition, attach the drain tube (fig. 2) and secure with a plastic tie-strap.Water Leaks from the Roof -- Owners may comment that there is water dripping from the front A-pillars or the headliner. The source of the leak may be an improperly sealed roof seam. The roof seam is located under the black rubber seal that runs from the front to the rear of the vehicle.TIP: This leak may be misdiagnosed as a sunroof water leak.1. Remove the Black Mohawk Molding (fig. 3) and the luggage rack to gain access to the roof’s body seam. Carefully pry the front edge of the molding up. Be careful not to damage the retaining clip, molding, and windshield.2. After the molding has been removed, inspect the roof seam for skips or voids in the seam sealer (fig. 4).TIP: To help speed the diagnostic time, run water along the complete length of the seam. You may be able to see the skip in the body seam sealer.3. Be careful not to damage the nylon retaining clip. If the water leak is coming from the front edge of the roof panel (fig. 5), the windshield will have to be removed.PDI Tips -- Two key items are still being overlooked during the Vibe’s PDI process: installation of the shifter override plastic button and the rear body plugs. See Service Bulletin 03-00-89-004.1. The shifter override release button is attached to the paper tag under the plastic protection for the shifter knob (fig. 6).2. If the shipping hole plugs are not installed (fig. 7), owners may comment that the vehicle has excessive road noise, or the rear passenger's carpet gets wet. Plugs must be installed in the holes used for shipping hooks during transportation of the vehicle (fig. 8). I think it's very possible it's #2 shown above. The rear driver's side is the place where water pools up the most. I haven't found the exact location of these holes/plugs, hard to tell on my car - the rubbery undercoating crap the dealer sprayed on mine covers the frame well and I haven't looked too terribly hard at the undercarriage. Not sure if anyone else has seen 'em. (Pics are at the link above.) We bought ours at the same dealer so he also has the undercoating, that's something they spray on all of 'em and charge you like $125 for. And good god, the amount of water he described pooled up in the back is insane. Smells pretty nasty too, he's had a few comments from people who have been in his car. So obviously we're going to need some serious defunkifying of that carpet, if that's even possible. I had just a little piddle from the A/C in my Malibu when it was new, but it was enough to make the car smell pretty skanky - we're talking new car smell completely gone in less than 30 days skanky! So I made the dealership replace the carpet once they finally fixed the leak (replaced the carpet 2x actually since they didn't fix it right to begin with.) Hate to think about how nasty that Vibe is gonna be... Unfortunately, since they won't cover the water leak, I doubt they'll cover the carpet replacement. Once mold and crap sets in, impossible to get it out. Somebody needs to buy a wet/dry vac. I've got a small carpet shampooer but I don't think it will be capable of removing that much water. We'll give the carpet a good cleaning, but not sure what to use for the smell. I dunno... We shall tackle this probably on Sunday provided I can wake up instead of sleeping all day... I'll keep you guys posted, and if anyone has any other suggestions on stuff to check, lemme know!Stay tuned, it's gonna be a mess.

[scherry2]

Quote, originally posted by ragingfish »I'm trying to remember where the moonroof drains ran in front...I know the two rear ones go down between the quarter windows and the hatch...the fronts are escaping me...I know they don't go down the A-pillars...just wires back there...so perhaps all the drains route out the rear...I might pull down my headliner tomorrow to do some reworking...if I do, I'll be sure to get pics for ya...the hoses for the front drains go down the a pillar, probably inside the a pillar or close to the winsheild.there is 2 much water in the rear floor area for the moonroof drains. I believe it might be the floor plugs. I'd be getting ahold of the district manager if they refuse to cover it under warranty obviously its a manufacturing defect.

[ColonelPanic]

Quote, originally posted by scherry2 »I believe it might be the floor plugs. I'd be getting ahold of the district manager if they refuse to cover it under warranty obviously its a manufacturing defect.Boy, did you ever hit the nail right on the head for this one! Get ready for a novel, folks. We spent a good couple of hours on the thing Sunday afternoon. On Saturday, my buddy went and vacuumed up all of the water he could get out of the carpet. Sunday, it was raining - and the floor was soaked again. Here is a pic of me pushing down on the carpet - notice the "glisten" of all that water.And another with a paper towel that was previously dry that I just laid on top of the carpet. I crawled under that sucker and found every single plug was exactly where it needs to be. Looks like there are four rather large plugs (2 per side) and a few smaller ones. The ones mentioned in the GM Tech Link document were all present. None seemed out of place, but when I pressed on the plug that is in the driver's side rear floor, water poured out. Which I think this next pic is the best of the bunch.I then removed the plug, and the underside of the carpet was exposed - completely soaked.Took off the door sill trim, pulled the carpet back and there was water standing in the floor pan. Unfortunately, none of the pics of the water came out so you can actually see the water. Put the carpet back in place and took the shampooer to it, sucking out as much water as it could. Once that was done, I ran a hair dryer over the surface for a good 10 minutes or so. Pulled the carpet back and blow dryed the underside of the carpet. Thought we had it licked by that point, but that was far from the truth.I then felt the carpet as it curves upward directly under the rear seat cushions. Only on the driver's side, I discovered that the carpet was soaked there too. So, we removed both rear seat cushions which allowed us to pull the carpet back even more. We found even more water pooled up on the driver's side rear. Same deal as last time, used the shampooer to suck as much out from both sides of the carpet as it could. Dried it up a bit with the hair dryer. No water was pooled up under the seat itself.Removed the front plug on the driver's side, the padding was somewhat wet. But it wasn't as bad as the rear - just had to get the water sucked out and took the hair dryer to it. Didn't really seem necessary to pull the carpet out up there, thankfully.Now, onto the plugs. Since they were all in snug, we were both kinda wondering why the water was getting in there in the first place. Found another plug back in that area that fits on the inside under the carpet, that was in there good as well. Only thing our collective "genius" could come up with was the suspect plug just wasn't forming a good seal. So, we figured we didn't have anything else to lose, so we went to town for some silicone. Of couse out here in the middle of nowhere where my folks reside, the auto parts store was closed. Ended up finding a tube of this blue silicon RTV "instant gasket" crap at a local store. Probably isn't the right thing to use, but that was really our only option aside from driving 30 minutes to get to a car parts store... We went ahead and pulled out all four of the large plugs - the passenger side plugs weren't leaking, but we figured while we were at it, it wouldn't hurt... Put a bead of silicon around the plugs, once it set up we then put them back in place. We then ran a bead of the stuff around the outside of the plugs. I'm not sure if that will help or make matters worse... Who knows. Sure does look like crap though. LOL!The plugs don't seem to be made from the sturdiest rubber, that's for sure. The one I took out of the driver's side rear seemed to have a few cracks here and there - nothing alarming though. Not worn to the point where water would go all the way through from what we saw. So, I believe I'll try to find the part number and order a few of 'em just in case. We checked everywhere imaginable for signs of water, only place we found was right there in the driver's rear floor. The door seals on his car are in great shap (much better than mine!) and they didn't show any signs of leakage... No other plugs that we saw were out. It had to be coming from that one place, I 'm thinking...I'll check with him tonight to see how things went for his commute today. It's raining, so it should be a good indication of whether our work paid off or not...Oh yeah, here's a pic of the collection tank on the shampooer after the fact. It was completely dry at the start of the project. Had quite a bit of water sucked out of that thing! I've got pics of the whole project here: http://photobucket.com/albums/...leak/ Did we do the right thing by sealing up those plugs? I hope so at least!

[ColonelPanic]

No water leaks so far. He'll give it a week or so, then run it through an automatic wash with the undercarriage spray to see if it leaks.

[Mase]

Unbelievable. Thanks for taking the pics...very interesting!So you're saying the water may have been splashing up underneath the car and seeping through the floor plugs? That doesn't quite make sense to me because that seems like a very large amount of water for that kinda leak. You had to push on the plug for the water to come out? If the seal was actually a bad one, wouldn't the water be dripping out on it's own without you pushing? It seems to me that the water leak would be coming from a source higher up. That would explain how it was able to pool up under the carpet. By sealing the plugs with the silicone, you may actually be sealing any future water pools in.

[ColonelPanic]

I dunno... I do see what you're saying. Our theory doesn't quite sound right, but that's all we could think of. We honestly didn't see any traces of where water has been seeping into the car from elsewhere, and we looked pretty hard. Well, about as good as we could without stripping the entire interior out of the car. lolThe only other things I can think of would be the quarter panel window leaking, roof leaking, or something such as that. But we just didn't see any evidence of it.The thought of sealing the plugs and holding water in there did cross my mind... But we were going with the assumption that the plugs were there to keep water out... Never thought about the need to drain water from the inside of the car.The water getting through the plugs may not have been the problem - too early to tell. But there's always next time to get this figured out. lol! And since the dealer won't do a damn thing about it (for free,) all we can do is try to figure it out on our own. They wanted $80 just to look at the stupid thing... GM warranty is gone, and he has a 3rd party extended warranty that won't cover this stuff (neither will the extended GM warranty I have on mine for that matter.)He's not real happy with the Vibe anyway, so he probably won't have it that much longer...

[ragingfish]

Damn!Since you already ripped up half the carpeting, I woulda just gone the whole way and ripped the entire carpet out, and put it in the washing machine.

[scherry2]

Welcome to my world!!! that is what I do at work. fun isn't it. well as reading what you have done so far I might be mistaken ruling out the sun roof drains, the rear drains (if I'm looking at the manual right) drain down behind the rear doors. the hoses could be out of place where they drain out. keep us posted. oh yea, the floor plugs are ment to keep water out.

[ColonelPanic]

Quote, originally posted by scherry2 »Welcome to my world!!! that is what I do at work. fun isn't it. Ha ha! Absolutely! Now, if it were my car, I may think differently. But he's making the payments and has the problem, not me. lol!Quote »well as reading what you have done so far I might be mistaken ruling out the sun roof drains, the rear drains (if I'm looking at the manual right) drain down behind the rear doors. the hoses could be out of place where they drain out. keep us posted. Cool... If she's still leaking, we'll tear into it more to see if that's the source of the problem. Whereabouts do the drain tubes run anyway? Didn't see 'em when we had the seat out. I'm guessing they're a bit farther back (behind the seats, I think?) We'd have to pull the cargo area trim and maybe the seatback to check that, wouldn't we? I dunno! I've got the Matrix manual around here somewhere, maybe I could check that...Quote »oh yea, the floor plugs are ment to keep water out.So it isn't going to hurt anything if he drives it around with silicone holding them in, right? Hope so!Thanks for all the help with this!

[ColonelPanic]

Quote, originally posted by ragingfish »Damn!Since you already ripped up half the carpeting, I woulda just gone the whole way and ripped the entire carpet out, and put it in the washing machine. What kind of washing machine would be capable of handling that load? He did run his floor mat through the dryer to dry it up. lol! That was the day before I took the pics of the wet carpet. It would have been great to pull everything... My one concern was figuring out the amount to torque the seat belts down where they bolt to the floor. I'm assuming they'd have to be removed down there... I'd rather not use my tried and true method of "tighten it 'till it doesn't tighten anymore." lol! If anyone has the toruqe specs for the various important things that bolt to the inside of the car, lemme know... Would I also need to pull the 'B' pillar trim as well? Kinda not wanting to do that either, with the pretensioners and all. Luckily no side air bags, so that wouldn't be a concern. If the leak isn't stopped, that could be a good all-day project some weekend.

[ColonelPanic]

Damn it! Still leaking. Time for a complete interior disassembly! So my theory with the plugs wasn't so. Oh well, no reason to throw out a perfectly good theory, just because it's wrong!

[scherry2]

Hmmm, I'd concentrate on the panels behind the rear doors. the seat should come out with a couple of bolts or nuts. and then the panels will just snap out by pulling gently on them.now you said that most of the water was on the drivers side rear I would pull that panel off and get inside while water is being run all over outside in that area try to see the water running in, start low and work your way up the side then over the top, pour water anywhere you don't have a smooth surface remember water can get really flat. the leak has to be facing somewhat up cause that much water doesn't come from below unless you were that deep in the water. it could be a ditch like it said in a earlier post. good luck.

[vibeforsale]

2003 vibe with optinal pool.I had the same problem. It was th moonroof draining into the car. The dealership fixed it after two attempts.I had them replace the carpet and they did. they also scracthed the crap outta the interior doing so. I'm still finding missing trim from they're first attempt to fix the problem.

[joatmon]

Quote, originally posted by ColonelPanic »I've got pics of the whole project here: http://photobucket.com/albums/...leak/ Sold the vibe, bought something else, and now your pictures are disappearing. It's like in the neverending story, it's being consumed by "the nothing" A good example of what happens when people host their pics somewhere else, then just link to them. If the pics had been uploaded into threads here at genvibe, they'd still be here. heavy sigh

[prathman]

Quote, originally posted by joatmon »A good example of what happens when people host their pics somewhere else, then just link to them. If the pics had been uploaded into threads here at genvibe, they'd still be here. |Sounds like a worthwhile project for the site moderators/administrators to take on. Make copies of any photos accompanying DIY repairs and/or modifications so they are hosted right on the site and can't later disappear.I recently did the cruise control installation and found the instructions on the site to be very helpful, but the pictures there were gone as well. They would have made me feel more confident about the procedure.

[ColonelPanic]

Quote, originally posted by joatmon »Sold the vibe, bought something else, and now your pictures are disappearing. It's like in the neverending story, it's being consumed by "the nothing" A good example of what happens when people host their pics somewhere else, then just link to them. If the pics had been uploaded into threads here at genvibe, they'd still be here. heavy sigh Blah blah blah, CP gets the suck (removed) member of the century award! I don't know what happened to the pics, they're gone forever. Probably got deleted as I shuffled things around, I dunno. At any rate, they turned out to be not even relevant as this particular Vibe still had soaked carpeting when my friend got fed up with the clunker and traded it in a few months later. What we tried didn't do squat to fix that POS. Sorry I didn't make multiple posts containing only a picture, I'm fundamentally against that. Having separate posts would mean a higher post count for myself, and quite frankly I never have wanted to appear as a post (removed). It is a good idea to attach here rather than link pictures in the long term, however that would consume an (removed) ton of disk space if everybody did that with every single picture posted here. I have space available on the internets to put stupid pictures, so I often use that instead of using disk space here. Aside from these missing photos, I have many others that are still valid and even though I no longer have the Vibe I will leave all of the pics where they are.

[kroaler]

I made an account just to tell my Story.

I had the water leak BEHIND the driver seat in the rear floor board.
The leak started at the rear driver side passenger Oh (removed) Handle.
Then disappeared, the next place water showed up was in the floor, it appeared to come up from the bottom.

See the picture below, the mat is FLOATING in water about 2 inch deep.

[kroaler]

We took the all the carpets apart and started chasing it down. I suspected the sunroof drain / gutters were the issue, so I took my water hose and LIGHTLY started putting water in the gutter I thought had problems, sure enough water started showing up around the Oh crap handle. So I took the headliner down to look,

Heres what I found. The drain hose had come OFF the gutter drain connection. So instead of going into the drain tube, it was just going off into the car. The water would run down the c piller, under the seat, then show up in the floor. The only wet spots were by the handle up top and in the foorboard.

All we did was re connect it and put the clamp on, pulled on it and it wasn't coming off, must been an assembly defect.

NOW to get the water / smell out, two options. Pull the carpets and pull the plug out of the bottom, this will drain the standing water. OPTION 2, use a shop vac. Use the big attach meant and just let it sit on one place for a minute, it will pull all the water to the surface. Once the water is at the surface, put on the wand attachment and suck it out.

My carpets were "damp" However when I got done vacuuming (3 hours worth) there was 3 inches of water in the bottom of a 25 gallon shop vac. Id say 5 gallons or more was lifted out from "damp" feeling carpet. If your carpet still feels damp to the touch, your not done vacuuming. Don't be lazy or you'll have stinky car.

ONCE your carpet feel dry, let your car idle for a while with the heat on HIGH RECIRC ( i let mine go 1.5 hours). ( You can see a Psychometric chart for an explanation of why what I'm about to say works) .... RUN THE HEAT ON RECIRC, Floor Mode, for 1.5 hours, this raises the amount of moisture the air can hold, and speeds up evaporation. After 1.5 hours, flip your car Over to AC REcirc and let the AC run for about an hour, The AC will dehumidify the moisture thats been lifted from your carpets. ( Colder air can't hold as much moisture, so it falls out of suspension in the evaporator coil and it the condensation drain. ( You should see a puddle of water building under your car, this is the moisture that was inside your car )

Just keep repeating this process of heat to evaporate, then AC to dehumidify until the dryness is to your liking. (Ideally this will be when your AC stops making a giant puddle of water under your car)

[Jbenrod]

"The drain hose had come OFF the gutter drain connection. "

What a nightmare! If you get a moment, please add some comments on how one gets access to that drain tube to check on it.

Do you think one can see and check the connection (problem area) without doing much damage to the headliner or does it turn into a pretty big project (which seems to be the case)? It looks like you had to removed the entire headliner.

[tpollauf]

"The drain hose had come OFF the gutter drain connection. "

What a nightmare! If you get a moment, please add some comments on how one gets access to that drain tube to check on it.

Do you think one can see and check the connection (problem area) without doing much damage to the headliner or does it turn into a pretty big project (which seems to be the case)? It looks like you had to removed the entire headliner.

Nice job and sounded like an easy fix I too will be curious as to how easy it was to reattach the hose? With TWO 2009 Vibe GT's (both with sunroofs) it is probably just a matter of time before I experience this myself. Thanks for the post!

[kroaler]

Wooah, I didnt think anyone would ever read my post. I have another problem with my car, thats the only reason I came back to Gen vibe (Car jerking HARD going into reverse, imma poke around the forums and see what I find. Hopefully its not major, I had a tranny flush about 4500 miles ago at a toyota dealer (150K on the odometer at the time).


TO ANSWER THE QUESTION:

NO THE HEADLINER WAS NOT HARD TO GET AROUND! I actually only pulled down the 1 corner I needed to work in, there were some plastic clips that connect and also some glue, I pulled the glued piece back slowly and it stayed sticky, so when I got done it stuck back perfectly. You cant tell I was ever there.

You have to remove the trim from the B and C piller and also the trim around the rear window, but once you remove those pieces (gently) the headliner is easy to just pull down in one corner.

Also from start to finish the whole thing (including getting the water hose out and cleanup) took me about an hour and I only needed 2 sockets and some nimble fingers. Also it took me 1 hour to fix the problem, it took half a day to dry it up nice, but my car smells great now!