Leaking MP5
 

I bought my '02 MP5 w/ 19k miles on it in nearly new condition. My wife and I have it up to 27k miles on it now. In the past month or so, we've noticed that the interior ceiling is leaking. Water soaks through in the corner between the windshield and passenger door, above the support. Once or twice it's leaked in enough that it runs down the support through the dash to the floor and soaked the carpet.

The strange thing is that it doesn't leak everytime it rains, or goes through the car wash. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

I checked the windsheild seal and it looks ok. I'm thinking it's coming from somewhere in the sunroof.

Has anyone else had a leaky protege?

nope..MUST GO BACK TO THE DEALER ASAP...you want this fixed BEFORE your warranty expires.

ninjaboy,
Does your moonroof have the wind deflector on it? If so, check to see that the clear plastic tape that keeps the hooks of the deflector from scratching the paint are not wrinkled up in any way. This is what happened on mine and caused the moonroof gasket not to make a good seal when closed. I replaced the wrinkled tape with a new piece and fixed the leak.

It does have the deflector. I'll check that tonight.

It's rough having one car between my wife and I. If we end up needing to take it to the dealer, we'll be out of tranportation to work for a couple days most likely.

does your warranty not have a loan-a-car program??

All we have is the factory warranty. I'll have to check on the loan-a-car.

The factory warranty covers for a loaner if they need to keep it your car.

the laoner is only for 03-04 cars I believe, but if your dealership is worth a crap they'll take care of you....

ninjaboy,
Did you find anything out about your leak?

I have the same problem as ninjaboy. I actually just noticed that the corners of the ceiling were damp. They weren't soaked but they were damp. I checked the ceiling after I looked at this thread, so kudos to you rtje. I pulled off the deflector and sure enough the tape was wrinked. For now, I took off the tape and I am keeping the deflector off for further testing. It will be raining here till atleast friday night so I'll be able to test the problem. Just for the record, what kind of tape did you use to replace the old tape? I was thinking of using packaging tape 'cause thats what it looks like, but I rather be doing it right.

I just got back from the dealer. They sprayed it down with some hefty pressure hose ... and it didn't leak. So like I said, it doesn't happen all the time. I showed them the water damage on the roof interior, so they said give them a call soon as it happens again.

I did look at the tape and it wasn't wrinkled. Though it does hang down abit underneath the lip of the body, so maybe it's curling up sometimes when the sunroof closes. Between the tape on the driver and passenger side I noticed that the passenger side isn't on both sides of the mount...

I'll try messing with the tape and see if that stops it.

Rippersnapper,
Any thick, clear tape will do. Once you've changed the tape and re-installed the deflector, trim the tape down so that just a little tape is exposed on each side of the clip. Having extra tape exposed on each side of the clips is only going to cause trouble later.

Same problem here. I'm checking the tape!!!

Update:
I took it back to the dealer again cause it was still leaking. They cleaned out the drainage tubes. After I talked with the guy a bit I found out what he was talking about.

If you open your sunroon all the way back, look in the front corners of your sunroof window. There's drainage wells in the corner that drain down into the tire well. These can get clogged up and water will back up and spill into the interior roof.

Helps if you take off your wind deflector to see em.

Also, today my wife and I were washing the car and I noticed that water really pools up under deflector. There are two holes in the seal on the front edge of the deflector that are supposed to keep the water from pooling up. It wasn't working too well though. I took the deflector off, took out my trustry dremel, and deepened those holes. I also made them a little wider and made another hole about an each away from the ones there. So on each side of the deflector there are now two larger holes for the water to drain out of.

We poured some water on the roof again and the water drained out much quicker. I felt the seal from inside the car, sticking my finger up in the window, and could still feel some water leaking through. I'm attributing that to that tape making a poor seal, but those drainage tubes from above I guess should take care of those leaks.

If I find a better way to make a seal with that tape, I'll post it here. I really recommend making those other holes in the deflector seal though, if it's a problem.

HEy I'm not too familiar with the deflactors, but I do know that one of the tricks that Yakima suggests you use on their racks to make the seal wher ethe clip that clips into the doorframe meets the rubber surround of your door better is to put some silicone down on the side before installing it. this squishes that silicone down and then instead of an abrupt edge coming in contact with the rubber seal which will inevitably leave a gap, you'll instead have a "bubble" of silicone that smoothly tapers the rubber back to the metal. I hope that makes sense. seems like it should work for your Sit as well...