Roofrack/ Headliner Repair

Going to drop the headliner and seal all the screws to hopefully fix my water leak. When doing this do I need to remove the rack strips on the outside too or just do everything from the inside?

The leak is probably not the rails. You may still have to drop the headliner, but you should check a couple of other options first.

Remove the rails, and scrape the old flaky sealer out of the channels on both sides. Once you have them to a solid surface, use roof cement to seal the seam. Do not make it too thick, or you will not be able to get the roof rails back in the channels. If you put the rails back before it sets up, you can "push" it to the maximum thickness. To get the nuts inside, you can pop the C pillars and the vista trim to access the nuts at the front of the side rails. Check the back corners of the vista window support for rust, while you have the side rails off. If that does not fix the leak, try some flowable silicone under the edge of the quarter glass reveal, and the sides of the vista glass reveal. The cars tend to rust at the rear corners of the vista glass, and sometimes the urethane will detach from the body around the quarter glass. The bolts did not leak at any time.

It appears that any water that comes in through the roof seams ends up in the channels formed by the sides of the headliner, and runs to the back of the car and down through the grab handles in the cargo bay.

I pulled both of my quarter glass to replace them a couple of winters ago, and found about 3 feet of the window had separated from the body around the front of the glass on the driver's side (side that was leaking). I also pulled the vista glass and it had about 3 inches of rust on the driver's side at the back (read hole), and there was a thumb size hole in each side of the back vista glass support, along with a peppering of small holes across the support.

I don't have vista glass. So not sure if any of these glass issues apply.

Fred is pretty dead on. I have my entire interior out at present chasing all the leaks. The Vista and rear glass is spot on. Water also comes in through door gaskets including the back glass one. Water gets beneath them and travels on the inside and down and out elsewhere or water gets into the body seam beneath the gaskets and travels elsewhere making the hunt a real challenge. There are also seam leaks at the rear like through the rear wiper mount hole and even on the gate deck by both taillights.

Taking the headliner out is the start. You then need to run plenty of water and start back tracing any pools of gathered water. Fred recommends clay as a dam and that works extremely well to identify not only the windshield area but all areas on the wagon. It is how I finally identified my big hidden leak beneath my Vista glass that had water traveling forward and backward along an unreachable seam.

i sealed all the roof,. on one car,. and it was the side glass,. it leaked like yours and filled the foot well like yours,.

phantom 309 wrote:

i sealed all the roof,. on one car,. and it was the side glass,. it leaked like yours and filled the foot well like yours,.

So what was the repair? Go to a glass shop and have them reseal? I can't imagine pulling those out are fun.

I found a good way to check for leaks. Use an electric leaf blower. Wet the exterior. Have someone aim it at different areas from inside the car. Spray diluted dish soap on the areas leaf blower is aimed at. Bubble = leak.