Leaking trunk, wet carpet, it's a mystery..
 

During the last few rain falls I noticed that the floor of my trunk was getting slightly damp. I thought it was leaking windshield washer fluid and dismissed it. But last night I opened the trunk to put in some groceries and it was flooded! The plastic box that holds the jack and tow hooks was full of water!

By inspecting the car (pulled out the carpeting) I can see that it looks like the water is entering some place around the left side of the trunk (passenger side) but I can't see where and even though I tried the hose I couldn't find a leak.

I have an appointment to have my tail lights replaced due to standing water.... Do you think there is something related? This was a lot of water and I'm rather spooked that I couldn't diagnose the problem last night.

Any help would be appreciated.

Hey,

Do you have a spoiler on? If so, pull the plastic piece under the trunk lid and see if it is leaking in around the bolts that hold the spoiler on. Worth a try.

Later
Corvus13

416to212:

I'm having that EXACT problem. Can't seem to replicate it with the hose. I swear I've checked everything - I even took the entire lining out of my trunk to see if could find any culprit rust spots.

Please update me if you discover the problem.


As for the taillight being the problem I'd say no. My trunk was damp when my taillight flooded. They fixed it.... trunk still gets damp. There *might* be a correlation in your 8, but at least for mine that wasn't the case.



EDIT:
Oh yeah, mine has a spoiler, so SP might be onto something

Hey again guys,

The reason I suggested the spoiler is from previous experience on a Mazda Protege. I kept seeing water (about and inch or so) building up in the trunk, but couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Being a submariner, I was going to be damned if I couldn't find the leak, so I checked all possible entries into the trunk and viola, the factory spoiler was lacking the seals that went around the bolts penetrations going into the trunk. The thing that makes this tricky to find is that water tends to follow strange paths when cornering (ie flowing through the trunk lid reinforcements to be deposited at a location feet away from the original leak site) Hope this helps (by the way I fixed it with a little bit of rubber gasket material and a healthy dab of silicone in the trunk.)

Latr
Corvus13

Check out this service bulletin. It may be related to your leak problem.

http://www.finishlineperformance.com...8-04-1248a.pdf

I'll check out my spoiler tonight...

Now that I'm waiting on rain - it's sunshiny.... go figure...

I'll also be looking for points mentioned on the service bulletin.

1/2mv - I'll keep you up to date with my findings...

I think someone else here had the same problem but the leak was in either a door seal or a rear-window seal leaking and running back to the trunk.

Looked at the spoiler bolts but ruled it not at fault. The bolt heads are places outside of the trunk seal.

Devil thanks for the tip off - I'll check it out...

I peed in your trunk.

I'll be in Dallas this week - you're dead...

Dallas, huh?... just 635 miles away. :wiggle:

Had that exact problem with my other car... water was getting in thru the (faulty) tailight seals. I couldn't believe THAT much water could get thru such a tiny opening but... fixing the seals fixed the "water in the trunk" problem.

my 2 cents

was the truck closed when it was raining?

my rear windshield had a bad seal and was leaking into my left rear bottom seat cushion. replaced the windshield bye bye strange leak. could be same thing here.

Don't overlook your sunroof drains. If the bottom of the hose plugs up, the water backs up, and runs down the outside of the drain hose- right into the trunk. This is a common problem with Miatas.

wow

Thanks

oh damn... That might be the case for me, then - my sunroof hasn't been closing all the way since I bought the damn thing...

Shoot...

I'll look into this further.
Really quick, though - is the top of the RX8 frame really that... erm... sealed? Is it really possible for water to trickle all the way down the the back of the frame & into the trunk without ever leaking out and staining your ceiling apholstery?

Water does funny things. Think of pouring coffee out of a cup. Sometimes the coffee just runs down the face of the cup instead of pouring out the top. Surface tension is a bitch sometimes.

I think it's one of two things of a combination of both in my case.

I think the taillight seal is leaking water into the trunk. It's a LOT of water just as Mendossa said.

I also think that the ventilation flaps are letting water in when the car is splashing through puddles. These flaps are located on each side of the trunk.

Mendossa - when you had water leaking into your trunk - did it seem like the water was being sprayed? The leak that I have ends up being a tidy pool of water when the car is parked but when after a drive it seems like the water was sprayed into the trunk. The entire rear right quarter is wet as if someone used a misting hose (Keep in mind all my carpeting has been removed to try to isolate the problem).

I'm gonna do one thing at a time to isolate the problem. First replace the tail lamps....

PROBLEM SOLVED

It was the faulty tail lamp seal. Once I had my tail lights replaced the leak vanished. Hope this info helps people in the future. BTW there is now a TSB on tail lights for leaking water and condensation.

My trunk was full of water the day after it was repaired from a rear-end collision. The first shop blamed it on one of the tail-lights and replaced it. However, it still leaked a week later. I brought it to another place I trust, and they basically took apart everything from the rear seats back and found water collecting in all sorts of places (check your rear seat cushion foam, for instance, it should be bone dry). There are a lot of gaps and potential openings to leak from in the unibody construction around the trunk, so they basically went all out and put extra sealing and 'caulking' on every possible panel and spray tested. Finally they got rid of the leak.

My point is it wasn't an easy fix, I hope yours is.

I have this problem,

can anyone tell me how to remove the carpet and plastic around the tool area of the trunk?

Remove the 4 plastic pop clips...grab the plastic molding and pull up sharply....then it will come off

need to remove the lower jack plastic as well..then the carpet will peel up

How do i check the hose plugs please?

How do i check the hose pipes pleaee???:fingersx: