… with our car’s water leak, a solution.
I had a look at Hyundai’s ‘hmaservice.com’ website which contains the workshop manuals for all Hyundai vehicles and came across a section on “Body (Interior)” – had a look at noted that the padding for the front pillar – is actually just clipped in, so pulling at it will cause it to come out.
And it did, this then gave us the ability to trace back where our long term water leak has been coming through, it has been a bad leak for a while, if it rains, we end up with a lake in the passenger foot well.
I was peaking at the firewall again today to see if there was rust that was doing it – Nope, there are more rust holes, and the bonnet looks like shyte, but it’s not the cause of the water leak.
I previously attempted to stop the leak by overdoing it with more sealant on the outside, but still with no success.
After pulling out the glove box yet again (I was checking the ECU connectors to see how easy they would be to open and solder some additional cables to), I saw where the water was coming through, which was ‘somewhere behind and above that pillar cushion thing.
Removing that cushion, and spraying some more water showed the water was coming through the black sealant that is placed down with the windscreen, some of it must have moved or cracked or something. Our windscreen is only 3 years old, so I would think this is unusual – but oh well.
I got some more black crap from Bunnings and stuck some of that in from the inside as high as I could get to, all around the passenger side of the windscreen. I think this will help remove some of the flooding that our car boat gets.
Next issue to attack is Rust. With another rust hole in the firewall, and some rust hiding under the windscreen, behind the bonnet hinge, we are likely to fail rego without an adequate fix in place.
I’ll check it again after the sealant dries to make sure the flooding has stopped – then we can look at the interior – it is soaked, and stinks from the water sitting there for so long. The ECU has rust lines around it from the leak too – I don’t think it’s a candidate for Rust Converter though.
I’m not sure on my abilities to fill in rust, the fibreglass job we had a friend take care of didn’t seem to be adequate – Rust Converter wasn’t applied and I can see behind the fibreglass is rusting again.
The other way to fix this is to rip off the bonnet, take out the firewall, transfer over the VIN and compliance plates, and weld the new one on, but I don’t have a welder and can’t be sure I’d get it right (sounds like more hassle then the car itself is worth!).
Then I still want to fix the bonnet – sand it back, rust converter to clear up the rust, and then paint it, put on some clear coat – and apply lots and lots of wax.
There is the idea of a 4G63 Go-Kart, for the kids of course.
Update: It definitely seems fixed – after leak testing it today, there was no water leaking through.