Flooding! Help please!

[treed2 at wsu.edu (T. Reed)]

Greets, Daniel.

Your windshield seal is the most likely culprit, IME. Try prying up the
passenger side top corner of the seal with your thumbs to see if there is
a big gap in there. The gap fills with water, which runs down the inside
of the gasket and dribbles down the footwells in to the floorpan.

Sometimes only one side leaks or they leak alternately depending on how
you were parked when it rained.

The cure is a new windshield gasket ($$$$$$) or a generous injection of
black silicone sealant all the way around the perimeter of the gasket.
You can buy some at any auto parts store; I think I used Permatex.
Only one medium-sized squeeze tube was needed, I think.

You want to get the stuff to fill the voids between the body and the
gasket. Just keep squeezing it in there until its completely filled and
starts oozing out. Wipe up the excess and let it dry. You'll want to try
to dry stuff out as much as possible before doing this, BTW. Popsicle
sticks can be useful as squeegees, guides or props during the sealing
process.

If some of it dries on a spot on your paint and glues itself in place you
can remove it pretty easily with liquid wax and a rag.

To make the potent smell go away you'll probably want to pull the carpets,
hit them with windex, isopropyl alcohol, or something to kill whats
growing in there. Let them dry for 3 or 4 days and then put 'em back in.
In a couple weeks the smell should work itself out. That is, assuming you
got the leak fixed and that you pulled the carpets before they were
completely destroyed. Remember to properly torque the seatbelt retractor
bolts after you take them off to pull the carpet.

Oh yeah, and don't forget the sand bags and belly-button-lint padding
layers in the footwell area. In fact, I think the lint thing is what tends
to smell the worst because it stays so wet. The point is; strip down to
painted floorpan metal so that the floor can dry out (and you can check
for leaks) and you get all the wet stuff out of there before it turns in
to slime. You'll want to spray some disinfectant on the bare floorpan too
because by now its harboring lifeforms as well.

HTH

-Toby


On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, daniel savatteri wrote:

> When it rained for a couple of days here in new york i noticed that my
> backseat floor mat was floating in a 1 1/2 of water and that the passenger
> side floor was soaked under the mat.  I realized this because i was trying
> to find the overwhlming smell of mildew rising from somewhere. I didn't
> drive the bad boy for a couple of days after it rained so I gave it some
> time to really grow a nice potent smell.  Only the passenger side is wet,
> nothing on the drivers side at all. I cannot trace the leak anywhere. Only
> the floor is wet, not the carpet on the side or the door jam carpet or even
> the carpet on the slant of the passenger side floor. Can anyone help me out?
> I would really appreciate it.
>