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I'm working on getting the rear hatch area on my S4 sealed up better. During rain there is a pretty reasonable amount of water that gets in, though the source is not exactly clear . Because I park on a little bit of an incline, I can narrow it down to somewhere on the passenger side. Maybe it's the hatch seal, but maybe it's also the hatch window or quarter panel windows; I've heard both things, so both will get addressed. I also plan to address some of the parts in the car that have been affected by water over the years and, generally, clean things up while I'm in there.
Removing the hatch seal I found some fabric tape underneath:
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I need to figure out if that's original and needs to be there when I replace the seal.
Moving on, there was an old repair that was not handling water particularly well, so I updated that:
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More to come, as I go through this. If there are ideas or experience with this issue, I'm all ears!
When my 944 hatch was leaking, I thought it was the dreaded 944 hatch delamination issue (glass separating from the frame), but no amount of sealing seemed to help. I finally laid on my back in the rear hatch area while a friend drenched the outside with a hose, and it was pretty clear the big rubber seal between the body and hatch was the culprit. Changing that fixed the leak. It also made the hatch feel better when you close it -- like you were sealing a hatch rather than closing the hood of an old pick-up truck.
Love the WeatherPack connectors -- not original, but probably better than the originals in that spot. I use them all the time.
Don't use the struts on rear hatch...it over stresses the glass, hinges, etc., it pushes up so can cause leaks, the weight of the glass without struts... helps seal it....I just use a prop stick...
The hatch seal itself is the most common leak spot. The next can be corrosion/rust-through at the bottoms of the rear quarter window openings. Rain and wash water like to follow the quarter window seals, and accumulate in the low rear corners.
The hatch position is vertically slightly adjustable with the wedges on the sides, but those are really intended to manage the effects of bowing an buffeting in the hatch itself. Do replace the plastic wear patches on the hatch where it rests on those wedges. Then, cut some strips of paper and lay them across the wedges, and also just across the seal spaced all the way around. Close the hatch, and make sure you can barely pull the paper out where the wedges contact. The strips across just the seal should have resistance. Any place the strips pull out freely means the seal isn't contacting the hatch, time to investigate further. For serious issues I've put a single strip of packing tape on one side of the paper. The test is still the same but I don't have to cut so many strips since I'm less likely to tear them. FWIW, same test works for door seals when you might be chasing leaks and wind noise.
Replacing the seal can be a real chore especially if you are doing it without help. There's a serious case for at least supporting the hatch up high from above. Disconnect the struts, and -carefully- pull the hatch up high to make some more room for the seal R&R. The wiring to the hatch passes right in the way of replacing the seal without removing one hinge. I carefully razor-slice the seal where it would be top center installed, snake it through the hinge/wiring, then carefully glue the two ends together again. Crazy-glue gel is tempting, black 3M Super Weather-strip adhesive (tube) is best. In a pinch you can use yellow Weldwood Contact Adhesive. Protect everything around the work area from the glue. Allow it to cure completely, and make sure the seal edge that faces up is continuous so it doesn't leak around the joint you made.
Do carefully clean and wax the inside of the hatch metal where the seal contacts. Nobody likes the wear marks plus the seal is way less likely to grow too attached to the lid.
I have never had or heard of any issues or concerns with having the struts in place and working. I've only had my car for almost 30 years now, so there's always that chance some future failure will bite me. Meanwhile, the risk of dropping the hatch lid from a prop stick is very real at least for fat and clumsy me. Plus there's no really good place to support the lid with that stick. I like the little gas struts. They are also self-storing... I think I'm on my fourth set now, with no problems. So far anyway.
Where you have "bulb" seals like this -- the vinyl tube with a body-flange clamp on one side and sometimes a little wing on the other when looked at in cross section. I've been able to add some support to a collapsed bulb section in specific areas by sectioning the bulb and inserting vacuum tubing or other plastic/rubber hose inside to help support the bulb. When sectioning and gluing the top of a bulb molding as I described above for installation, a couple inches of small vacuum hose in the bulb will help keep the rejoined molding aligned as the glue dries. Use care when doing this, as the bulb still needs to compress some without completely squishing that little wing. But if you detect some non-contact areas with the paper-strips slip test you can help that a little. I've also placed some small cord inside the body-flange clamp in some places to lift the whole molding slightly so it makes contact with the hatch when closed. Small-engine (OPE) unreinforced silicone fuel hose is also a good option.
Maintenance on the seal can include a very thin film of silicone grease (SilGlyde or the Porsche-branded version) rubbed into the face where it will contact the close hatch. This can help extend the life of the seal, and also stops a lot of squeaks if the hatch flexes or moves even a little while driving. Wax on the sealing face on the hatch itself too.
Any thoughts on the screws that attach the outside trim? I've sourced some stainless replacements, along with some sealing washers, but I have a couple of questions.
1) Are what I'm seeing directly under the screws, washers of some sort? PET only shows some very small parts and it's hard to figure out what's going on.
2) How tight should the screws be? I'm paranoid about breaking something expensive.
3) Can I jam some new butyl mastic in there somehow, to build up any potential low spots in the material?
I've ordered new trim clips for the inside pieces, as they were all rusty. A couple of the plastic ridges look to have been broken in the past, so I'm thinking about how to fix that. It's a tricky place to repair things given the curvature of the trim bits.
Zirconocene wrote: Thu May 25, 2023 3:46 pm
Any thoughts on the screws that attach the outside trim? I've sourced some stainless replacements, along with some sealing washers, but I have a couple of questions.
I've been scratching my head a bit trying to ID the screws and outside trim you mention. Are more clues available?
Once I got it all apart, the washers were, indeed, the sealing type, where there's a rubber part bonded to a concave lock washer. I was able to order some parts from McMaster, but should have ordered a slightly larger diameter washer. For those interested, this is what I ordered: https://www.mcmaster.com/94709A112/
Because I wanted to get back to driving the car, it's what I used, but I think that this part is much closer to what I pulled off the car (which I assume to be the original part): https://www.mcmaster.com/94709A211/
I took a lot of pictures of what I've done and will post them, eventually, I'm just knee deep in trying to get other cars back to being reliable.
For what it's worth, I have NOT yet fixed my water intrusion issue, and currently believe that it's the seals on the rear quarter windows, which is a bit of a bummer, but next on the list, sometime this winter.
Remind me please where these washers are used. I'm drawing a memory blank. Thanks!
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In parallel, I started a very casual look for bulb molding options. The design with the little wing on it makes most common replacement moldings a poor choice. I did find a couple with the wing but need to confirm the cross section. EPDM seems to be the current material choice too.
My original molding seeps a little at top center when I wash the car, requiring a quick swipe with a detailing towel after blowing any standing water out of the hinge cavity area. I'm not sure if the water gets in with the hatch closed or it migrates after I open the hatch for drying. Since installing the factory molding demands sectioning and re-gluing unless you plan to pull and replace the wiring, I won't feel too much non-original parts guilt by just gluing a new piece of modern bulb molding to fit. The bulb section on my original vinyl molding is pretty permanently compressed, so replacement won't be a Bad Thing even it it isn't actually leaking yet.
The Good News part of this is that the car virtually never sees rain. I have more fingers to count on that times it's been rained on it its life. Everything gets completely blown out with air at wash time, a lesson I learned living with extra-hard water in SoCal. Even with a water softener, it took some serious drying effort to avoid mineral spots and stains on the glass and black paint.
For the rear hatch seal I found this from Amazon: "NOONE 20Feet Long Car Door Rubber Seal Strip", Type OU (The direct link is not working when I try to post it, apologies).
I tried to measure the height, as you did, and the height of the bulb on this seemed just a little taller than the stock part. Of course, it's missing the little wings on the profile of the bulb. I believe that those are there primarily to help direct water away from an entry path into the car, and hope that the ridges inside the gripping bit take up the slack on that front. So far, the main bulb seems to make good contact all around the hatch, from a visual inspection. What water I've seen from the small amount of rain the car has seen lately is about what I expect normally, so it doesn't seem like the hatch seal is allowing any further water in.
It also made the hatch feel better when you close it -- like you were sealing a hatch rather than closing the hood of an old pick-up truck.