Opened your car recently only to be confronted by a puddle deep enough to sink the Titanic?!!

This FAQ will help you stop those sneaky leaks, or prevent them from happening in the first place.


SIGNS OF LEAKING

Puddles are the most obvious sign, but not all leaks are that severe, and it also depends on the amount of rainfall how wet the inside gets.

Feel around the carpets in front and behind the seats, and also in the boot. Press hard to see if any puddles form.

Excessive and persistant condensation can also be a sign of leaking.


FINDING THE LEAK

Firstly, where is the damp collecting??

IN THE DRIVER/PASSENGER FOOTWELL/REAR PASSENGER FOOTWELLS - Check the corresponding door seal for cracks, perishing, etc. Check under the battery for any obvious rust or holes. Press on the carpet immediately inside the door to see if any puddles form. If the cause of the leak is still not obvious - read on...

ON THE SEATS - Have you or a passenger pissed themselves recently, spilt a drink perhaps, left a window open - or maybe you just have a leaky sunroof. No sunroof - you may be incontinent. Seek advice from a doctor!! {319}

IN THE BOOT - Check the seal around the hatch for any signs of perishing, cracks etc. Remove the light clusters and clean up the mating faces. Apply a smear of vaseline to the seals to make a good seal before refitting, ensuring the nuts are done up firmly.


PREVENTING COMMON LEAKS

Prevention is better than cure - so here are a couple of common leaks which can be prevented early on...


BATTERY TRAY - The area under the battery tray can rust through causing extensive leaking into the car. Remove the battery and check for any signs of rust. Clean up the area appropriately and treat with a thick layer of undercoat and allow to dry before refitting the battery.

Be sure to keep the battery and fusebox areas clear of leaves and sediment. It is also possible to fabricate some pipes to fit at the sides of the scuttle tray to lead water down into the drain holes towards the rear outmost corners of these areas.

This has worked extraordinarily well in our Mk2 which is now over 23 years old and still going strong despite being kept outdoors all of it's life.


DOOR LINERS - The door liners are the plastic sheets behind the doorcards which keep water out. In the early Mk2 this is little more than a flimsy flat sheet whilst in the Mk3 they are thicker and slightly more sculpted. They are all shit - by design!!

Don't underestimate the purpose of these items. The angle of the door is such that water will literally piss in if they are not there. The problem is that the adhesive on these items is prone to fail after a number of years, especially if they have been removed as some stage.

The easy way to fix them is to throw them away and fit a more effective alternative...



Where this design succeeds over the original is that it hangs down inside the door, rather than being stuck to the outside of it. It is simply held across the central beam of the door with some double sided tape, and is secured inside the door by the bolt which secures the window winder mechanism.

Don't delay - do it today!!

what sort of sheeting did u use?

where did u buy it from?

I used some clear bin bags from work.

I found Wilco rubble bags worked quite well!

ok, to be serious

i've got a drippy leak onto the passenger seat

and its definately not an incontinent passenger as i've seen it happen whilst washing the car before...

have you got a sunroof? check that the drainage pipes aren't blocked, the top of the sunrooves aren't water tight so water will get in but it should pour out down some drain holes to the corners of the car. if these are blocked then the tray under the sunroof will start to fill up & it'll leak out into the car.

i know this is an ancient how to.... but...

I'm tearing my hair out with my mk3 now,

i've had the windscreen sealed (with sealant down the rubber seal on the window side and the metal side)
i've welded and fiberglassed the battery tray up as that had rotted,
the door seals are all like new from a barely used mk3 in a scrappy,
the boot doesnt leak anymore from where it has had a shunt (more sealant!)
basically, the footwells are filling up. time to take out the carpets and seats and dash (again) and watch to see where it comes from

i've got water dripping down the sides of the footwells holes in the door fram are sealed (electric windows) and it did this before fitting them, the drain holes for the bulkhead are not rotted through (drivers was, has been fiberglassed and sealed... this has left me with very soggy carpets again.

how common is it for the sunroof to cause this? do i just remove the plastic trim from the pillar up by the windscreen and have a look at the pipe running down? it doesnt look like water is pooling up in the sunroof bit (if i open the sunroof to check) but thats probably because its going straight into the car somewhere. none of the roof lining is damp at all

Had several of the problems mentioned.
Heres 1 for you . Had water dripping onto the back seat leaving a puddle under the seats. Turned out to be the seal around the tailgate, especially around the hinges where it goes out of shape.
Just thought this was worth mentioning

yeah, on the one i had, someone had shunted the rear driver side corner, pushing the panel under the light in slightly - leaving a hole where water ran down the correct side of the boot seal, followed the curve of the car, straight into the boot... not good!

Does anyone know how to contact Steve_O these days? I'm trying to get hold of the images for his FAQ posts so I can re-host them and bring these FAQs back to full usefulness but he's buggered off and his PM is disabled.

I've had a few of these problems too, when i first got my mk3 it had a severe leak in the boot. it had been shunted sometime ago and water was coming in around the light seal. my battery tray was rotted so that got sorted. but water was still filling up the front footwells. But i found the problem a couple of weeks ago. in the middle of the scuttle panel under the heater matrix there is a drain hole with a rubber funnel in it. (runs over the top of steering rack) this was full of leaves and s**t. cleaned that out and cut the end off and had no more leaks since.

Did this leave a puddle just under the clutch pedal? I noticed a puddle today, not seen one before, but not washed the car since i got her a week or two ago.

Don't suppose anyone has the original image (or at least a description) of how to do the improved door seal?

iv got quite a big puddel in my pasenger foot well ?? realy pissin me off ??

My daughter has a Polo first reg 03/04. During wet weather, there is always water in the passenger foot-well and in the foot-well behind the passenger seat. The car has been extensively examined at our local garage, and this included high pressure water sprayed all over the car. We still cannot find where it is taking in water. We are almost at the point of trading it for something else !!

I had this same problem in my mk3, 10 years older but may be the same problem.
I had a hosepipe in every crevice on the car and no sign of the leak, turned out it was in the passenger footwell, right up behind the dash, a tiny little hole where two pieces of bodywork had been welded together in the factory. Put abit of sealant on there and its good as new (2months on).

Also the water in the back footwell could be the carpet soaking up all the water so it's spreading. Worth a look anyway like I said its the different model but you never know.