Water on the driver’s side floor, I’m stumped any ideas?

[16g-95gsx]

Alright guys, and it’s got me stumped. Hoping someone has seen this before

I have water on the driver’s side floor of my E53 X5 4.8is. Before people say it’s the vapor barrier I want to say that I have replaced it, and after just inspecting it it looks flawlessly sealed. When I install them I make sure that the surfaces are fully decreased and the butyl seals strongly before I button things up. The door drains on this car are huge, about a half inch long so they shouldn’t be clogged. A year ago I tore out the entire interior and pulled the sunroof in order to 100% make sure that wasn’t the cause of leaks. It received new seals, and all the drains were cleaned out with compressed air. Afterwards I even lightly epoxied all four drain tubes to the barb and heavily clamped them to make sure that they never pop off in the future. so I doubt anything there is the culprit. The drivers side rear floor is dry, so it is definitely coming from the driver’s door area.

Wtf else could it be? The white plastic barb clips that hold the door panel on have foam washers, at the risk of sounding stupid I assume those are just for noise and not really for sealing but maybe I should change those too? I have a hard time believing that the shadow line window trim rubber is allowing so much water in that it backs up the two massive drains in these doors. Any other ideas?

[80stech]

Maybe A/C heater box drain plugged ? Where does water drain that gets into hood vents for heater fan ??

[16g-95gsx]

The water is biased towards the door side of the driver’s footwell so I don’t believe that it’s HVAC related

[80stech]

Maybe windshield ??

[nice1guv]

There has been some recent talk about kinked sunroof drains.
I know you mentioned you blasted them with air, but could they be kinked?
They apparently kink behind the a-pillar.
Just remove the trim and take a look.

[andrewwynn]

Koolaid and paper towels (no sugar the packet kind) not full strength just enough to add color that won't stain. Put the towel where you suspect the leak enters and pour the weak colored water along the a pillar then on the door seams and then finally the roof window.

If you have light inside carpet cover and tape off so you won't stain the rug. If black like mine use red coloring and common sense (like my rubber floor mats)


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[16g-95gsx]

So a bit of news, while I doubted the drain as I really did failure-proof the drains, what I found when pulling the A-pillar cover was that the sound insulation behind it was wet. This meant that there is no doubt about it the water had to come from the sunroof/drain. The drain is not kinked, but what I do see is marks where the A-pillar cover screw location is that tells me the drain was *pinched* by the actual cover itself. It’s a truly terrible design by BMW but I’m certain that it explains it. The drain likely wasn’t fully pinched shut, which explains why it has yet to leak for months, but during a heavy rain the restriction was overwhelmed and the water simply backed up. I’ll attach a few pics so that others can learn from this.

[16g-95gsx]

See the attached pics. You can see that the hose has pinch marks on it from the panel where it was pinched against the flat part of the A pillar between the chassis and the cover to the point that the ribs on the backside of the cover indented the hose. Notice the hose is installed as it should (as evident by the metal clip holding it) be but was still easily pinched. Hopefully this helps others, such a horrid design.

[andrewwynn]

Wowza amazing.

You say "where it should be" but it's clearly on the top of the flat landing around the screw hole= bad as opposed to the wire loom that is tucked back around the flat and in a safe place. Is the tube supposed to be left or right of the screw support? It looks like right which should be an easy enough fix. A couple zip ties to keep with wire loom.


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[16g-95gsx]

I believe this is how it sits by factory design. If you look at the brass bracket that holds both the loom and the drain tube in the pic above you’ll see that it has two humps which hold the loom and the tube seaparately. I don’t believe that there is room to push the wire loom any deeper but I’ll confirm when I get home as I had to drive the M5 today (First world problems). In a way I’m happy to find that this was the cause as I did everything I could do to prevent the vapor barrier from leaking and I was worried that it was still the cause. This seems like a dumb design but I can engineer a solution.