Disco 2 CSI Leaky roof edition.

Right, so far I have peeled the **** bathroom mastic out of the sunroofs, done all the roof card fiddling, fettling, drain cleaning and suchlike. (to no avail)

And mow I have replaced the mastic with sikaflex,
as frankly I couldn't care less about working sunholes, I just want a dry car.

And yet, the roof is wetter than a wet thing. water ****es out of the rear aircon and controls.

Any ideas?

Leaky roof edition. That suggests they made an edition that didn't leak.

To be fair ours only leaks after heavy rain. I'm glad they weren't in the business of making boats.

Sadly, wales and heavy rain go together pretty well.

I dunno, the bottom half seems to do pretty well at staying dry, just the top half is arses.

Sadly, the only sure fire way to sort the problem is to start again from scratch.
That means first getting the headlining down and out of the vehicle completely. This will give it a chance to dry out properly and for you to fix any problems with the finishing material coming away from the foam under-lining.
It will also give you the opportunity to examine exacly where the water is coming into the vehicle. The usual places are from around the seal of the sunroof assembly where it meets the roof.
You should also check that the water doesn't come in from the roof bars fastenings and you should check too the state of the roof channel on the outside to make sure that the seal is good there too, particularly under the gutter, just above the "A" post.
I've attached the LR Discovery water ingress manual and the link below is to a page here to help you a bit more.

https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/discovery-how-to-repair-a-leaking-sunroof-guide.99543/

To eliminate the sunroof problem, some people have used 2 inch wide duct tape to seal them either temporary or permanent.

That guide was the first thing I did, but handy to have the link again.

I was considering adding duct tape, if only to rule out any more ingress through a whole bloody tube of sika.

As per @brian47 comment,

Start from scratch.

\did you remove the whole sunroof and frame work from the car?

Cheers

I did all the inner frame gubbins, but not the sunroof and mechanism from the top.

Berk said:

Sadly, wales and heavy rain go together pretty well.

I dunno, the bottom half seems to do pretty well at staying dry, just the top half is arses.

Click to expand...

Hello Berk

I am only just looking at your thread and don't know if anyone, or yourself tried unblocking (if they are blocked) the drain holes which will be located in the chanell that the roof slides in.

I understand that the seals on the edges of the roof window are not intended to keep all water out. They are there to assist only. The water should drain away into the gullies and from there flow into and down the "drain pipes" which often run down from the roof inside the front windscreen pillar and out at some convenient position in the wheel arch.

It is easy to check if the system is clear by filling the gully when the sun roof is open. If the "drain pipes" are clear you will be able to see the water flow out onto the ground at the rear of your front tyre. If no water is seen you have a blockage.

A blockage can be cleared either by sticking a thin piece of metal, wire coat hanger is my weapon of choice, or a strong blast of air from a compressor at your local filling station.

I recently acquired a Ford Focus with the same problem. The vendor had gone to the trouble of tapping the joint to stop water ingress. Even the local ford agent (here in Ireland) had no idea what the problem was. Good old www had numerous suggestions, most of which made sense.

I poked down all the drains when I had the roof apart, all seemed pretty clear, but I'm thinking now that the 4' or so of net curtain wire stuff was possibly too short, how far do the drains run?

OK,

First thing remove the roof lining. Not doing this is a waste of time.

As has been said, you can test the drain offs, as there are a couple of options.

1) They are blocked, pour some water down them and see if it disappears, it should reappear by the front wheels as already said by Alan. If not then the frame will fill with water and overflow into the vehicle. Or you can blow down them.
2) The drain offs are snapped and broken , as the link given by Brian. In which case the water will leave the frame and not go down the drain but into the vehicle.

OR:

1) The frame is not sealing to the outside of the roof as LR used a thin felt seal. Remove the whole sunroof and add a bead of sealant around the whole outside edge on the outside . Replace the frame from the top, add sealant to the inside framework and rebolt the two together.

Also check the following: But for the amount you have I would hazard a guess you have a major failure in the sunroofs.

The roof bars, take them off add sealant to the bolt face and reattach.

The Alpine windows , Spray lots of water and see if any comes in, add a dab of sealant if needed,

The Windscreen, top edge and corners. spray water and see if any ingress. quite often the top outside corners have a little dribble.

Cheers

I have no idea of the exact length, but it has to be at least the same distance from the front edge of your sun roof to the bottom edge of the inner wheel arch.

When I did mine I put a few drops of a product that we put down the drain to clear them out. It's a Mr Muscle product called "Kitchen and Bathroom Drain Gel". I suspect that it's too strong for the job but I'm old and need instant gratification!

You might also try putting some washing up liquid in to your water before you check. The bubbles make it easier to identify the water coming out and certainly will not be detrimental to the clearing/cleaning process.

Here is some reading matter for you.

Enjoy...........

As far as I'm aware, those little drain holes are to steer away any water that might run off the sunroof glass and drip into the inner seals when it's open.
Berk's problem seems to be a general ingress of water whether the sunroof is open or not.
I still reckon that the major part of the problem is water getting in around the seal between the roof and the whole sunroof assembly and I still refer back to the advice in the link I've already given.

You might well be right Brian, but my own thoughts are to make certain that the drain holes are clear. It's very simple to do and a very cheap fix if it works. If Berk is happy to play with his tool kit then clearly to take the whole thing apart and make sure any fallen leaves or other rubbish is out of the mechanism.

Once he is certain that it's all a should be then reassemble and wait for it to rain again. If you have a problem waiting for rain just hop on a ferry and spend an hour here in Ireland - problem solved!

What ever you decide to do I wish you luck. Please keep us all posted on the outcome

Lots of good advice here.

I'm thinking I might have to hold off on doing the job for a few weeks at least, because, well, wales. and my landrover sized shed spaces have straw or livestock in. so that's a bit of a pain.

I'll probably pull the roof card out when I can and just do the whole job properly, rather than in a hurry.

Until then, I'll gaffer tape the seams, in the hope of slowing it down a bit and getting a decent idea if it's actually the sunroof, or something else.

You should consider some of this as well
http://www.captaintolley.com/


I had the sunroof leak and then the top of the A pillar, this stuff sorted the A pillar leak with no problem.
Be prepared to find more than one leak looking at the state of your headlining.

Have to be honest on the disco I had before the one I have now, I tried duck tape didn't stop it, then fiber glassed all round and over it, did bugger all good, could hear it sloshing around as I drove along, poor buggers in the back would get a shower every now and then, boy was I popular, so when I found a leak on my td5 had someone come and fix it, best £300 ever spent, dry as a bone

Just to add a bit extra to the thread - I recently purchased a 2000 Disco 2 which was cheap as the headlining was hanging down in sheets. So I naturally assumed leaking sunroofs. After an interior strip I found that all of the drain pipes had been expertly repaired and the sunroofs were both fine BUT whoever had done the job had not done a thing about drying the inside out - saturated carpets and sound deadening, water that was dripping off the roof like a trip down Wookey Hole and damp everwhere - so much so that all of the speaker grills were brown rust!

I purchased a dessicant dehumidifier from Amazon and it's been running for nearly a week and so far I extracted over 70 litres of water from it - it's slowing down now and the carpets etc feel dry and no more misting inside the car.

So when you do finally track down the leak, it's well worth investing in some way of drying the inside out thoroughly. When the job was last done I noticed that they had stripped the headlining and glued the fabric back in place - obviously it failed again pretty quickly with the accumulated damp/moisture.

HTH

PS when running a dehumidifier remember to close all the fresh air vents

SteveClv said:

Just to add a bit extra to the thread - I recently purchased a 2000 Disco 2 which was cheap as the headlining was hanging down in sheets. So I naturally assumed leaking sunroofs. After an interior strip I found that all of the drain pipes had been expertly repaired and the sunroofs were both fine BUT whoever had done the job had not done a thing about drying the inside out - saturated carpets and sound deadening, water that was dripping off the roof like a trip down Wookey Hole and damp everwhere - so much so that all of the speaker grills were brown rust!

I purchased a dessicant dehumidifier from Amazon and it's been running for nearly a week and so far I extracted over 70 litres of water from it - it's slowing down now and the carpets etc feel dry and no more misting inside the car.

So when you do finally track down the leak, it's well worth investing in some way of drying the inside out thoroughly. When the job was last done I noticed that they had stripped the headlining and glued the fabric back in place - obviously it failed again pretty quickly with the accumulated damp/moisture.

HTH

PS when running a dehumidifier remember to close all the fresh air vents

Click to expand...

Good post mate and good advice.

Been a bit up to my tits in life recently, the flu, calves to look after, general life.

Anyway, Still not done anything, just keeping it under cover during the welshest of weathers. Which incidentally has solved the problem where it was a git to start on cold days, and the thing where I had to start it every day.

But, plan is to get her apart some time in the next few weeks and really look at what's going on, might go as far as some leak dye and really getting to the bottom of it.

Aside from this, and a half arsed ACE delete, and a disconnected AC pump, and the tiniest of oil leaks, it's not a bad car.