Interior wet carpet

[A.C.SCHNITZER]

Hi People
Every time when it's raining my car's (BMW E36 320i 1993 manual) carpet on the driver's side under the pedals (right hand side in South Africa) becomes wet, does anyone knows what's the cause of this? Please help. Any relevant comments will be highly appreciated.

[JhwShark]

Could be a bad window seal that allows seepage
or rust/degradation in the mud sill
or even rust from the floor pan -- most likely lot's of e9's have this one
or if sunroof could be seepage down the pillar

just trying to help from the northern hemisphere,
Jon

[Jat007]

Wow! I am not the only one with this problem

First, check the drain holes and make sure they are not clogged with leaves and junk. How, open your sunroof and use something like a long wire coat hanger or something along that line and poke through these holes.

2nd, check to see if you might have a broken drain hose that runs along the sunroof down to the driver side pilar. This hose has know to break or ruptured. If it's try to patch with plastic repair kit.

You can test this by leaving the pilar off and run water over the sunroof and see where it's coming from. Don't forget to close the sunroof first when doing this test

If this hose is solid after a visual inspection, it's more likely is your sunroof cassette is crack. I spent the entire summer looking for this leakage, which made my carpet on the driver side wet every time it rained.

A brand new sunroof cassette from the dealership is about $600+ bucks. You can buy a good used one for about $75-100 bucks with a matching interior as well. I got mine for $70 bucks and I had two to choose from.

I spent a a whole Saturday doing this swap, well, I took couple of cat naps in between

This is a section on this site talked about how to remove the sunroof and etc. Otherwise, you can google it and you'll find plenty info on it.

I will bet dollars to donuts that you have a bad sunroof cassette. By the way, craigslist is a good source for buying one of these used and reasonable.

Best of luck!!

Jat

[Allandonald]

Cars are enclosed spaces with poor air circulation when the car is not running. As a result, even a little bit of water on the carpet can lead to mildew and other problems if left alone. Cold, damp weather can make it even harder to get your car dry.