sunroof drain lines leaking on front drvr sd floor ?

I've been chasing a water leak for a month now. My driver side floor gets soaked when it rains. I've cleaned out the ducts under cabin filters, its not door vapor seals, thought it was my deteriorating windshield seal, but that was another NO. Someone told me something that i initially blew off , but now Im starting to wonder....does anyone know if the sunroof has a drain that for.whatever reason runs under the dash area just above the brake pedal ??? This is where the water seems to be originating from. Its been raining for 5 days straight so I have my car parked under the carport and I just don't have the room to under there to fully open my door in order to get in there look.

Might be the sunroof drains snapped out of position. Check this out.

The sunroof drains are probably blocked. When this happens the tray surrounding the sunroof fills up with water and overflows, and the water just finds it way downwards, ending up wherever gravity and chaos theory takes it. You will end up with wet carpet as ultimately that's the bottom of the car.

Get a length of line trimmer plastic cord, open your sunroof, put a towel or something over your seats, and start cleaning out the gunk. Eventually you should find the holes in the front corners of the drainage tray, which lead to the drain channels. Feed the line trimmer cord door the holes, working it backwards and forwards. Hopefully you'll here a gurgling sound and water will drain out behind the front wheels when the blockage is cleared. You can also use a household water spray to help clean out the gunk around the sunroof.

Coincidence ???!! I found water getting in at the top driver's side corner of my windshield gaskets, running down to bottom corner, down behind dash, down the back of the firewall and under the carpet. Some was finding its way to the lower dash under panel and draining behind the brake pedal. So I removed my windshield and installed with all new gaskets and sealant . After it cured I washed my car....my drivers side was bone dry, but my rear passenger floor mat is soaked !!! So this would be a door vapor seal ??? Just a coincidence that the day I fix the windshield leak my vapor seal leaks or is there some strange connection between the two ???

If you have a sunroof I would still check the drain channels. The sunroof is the highest point on the car, so the water will show up in all sort of weird and wonderful places once gravity does its work. Because the hood lining is plastic backed the water runs off it and into the frame at random points.

Understood....I will check the sunroof. The only reason I jump so quickly to vapor seals is the placement of the water....it was wettest towards the rear of the back floorboard. It was dry near the bottom of the pillar. Although I completely see where you're coming from . Atleast it has to be one of two so I will find it. Im just so tired of findng water in my car lol !!!! Thanks for taking the time.

Ok....now im really flabergasted !!! I ran a piece of coated galvanized cable through the sunroof drains and heard them both hitting i.side the front wheel wells . When I pulled the cable out it was clean. So Im thinking the drains are clear and complete...not disconnected or broken anywhere. So about then it starts to pour down rain again as it has for 9 days straight now and today the passenger back seat floorboard is dry and the front driver is soaked again. I can see the water dripping down front the handle that pops the hood and the foot rest right behind it. This is seriously starting to piss me off lol !!!

Maybe the connectio betwen the drain hose and the sunroof cassette becomes loose.

Look for thread by "pleiades".

Originally Posted by diggyd357

Ok....now im really flabergasted !!! I ran a piece of coated galvanized cable through the sunroof drains and heard them both hitting i.side the front wheel wells . When I pulled the cable out it was clean. So Im thinking the drains are clear and complete...not disconnected or broken anywhere. So about then it starts to pour down rain again as it has for 9 days straight now and today the passenger back seat floorboard is dry and the front driver is soaked again. I can see the water dripping down front the handle that pops the hood and the foot rest right behind it. This is seriously starting to piss me off lol !!!

I went through something like this and wrote about it but didn't take any good pics. In post #2 above, Doru provided a link to another DIY with nice pics.

My situation was that the bunny-eared drain hose connectors had actually come loose enough that they leaked whenever it rained. The drain hoses themselves were -not- clogged.

So what I did was remove the grab handle and sunvisor hardware so that I could lower the front corners of the headliner enough to get my hands in there, pull the bunny ears on the connectors so they'd slide off the cassette nipples, coated the cassette nipples with enough Permatex Ultra Black (not so much as to risk clogging the tip or tubes), slid the connectors back on and pray for a watertight seal, which fortunately I got. Zipties might have helped but I didn't use any. My car sits out the rain half a year here in the NW and no leaks for two years, fingers crossed.

--------------------[addendum]

Oh, if you haven't already done it, removing the relevant headliner stuff up front is very easy and doesn't take much time.... I think I spent about 15 minutes per corner. See the following headliner removal DIY wrte-up (for an e38...)

http://www.bimmerboard.com/forums/posts/566588