Water Pooling Rear Drivers Side Door
 

Can't seem to find where the water is coming from, rained pretty hard the other day and there was a small pool of water right here inside the door on the seal / carpet.

Washed the car today, and there was some water there too. None of the seals are ripped or anything.

I feel like I may have to take off the door card and see if maybe the glue failed?

Side note: If i leave the doors open for 20 minutes, it shouldn't kill the battery and have me reset the time and date.

:)

I think the E53 had issues like this, and if my memory serves me right, it had something to do with clogged or broken drainage tubes with the sunroof or something like that. I think you will have to go to the dealership. Good Luck!

If I leave the door open for 15 minutes while cleaning inside the car, I get an increased discharge warning with date and time cleared. Its ridiculous.

My initial thought was sunroof drainage... but NOT a 'dealer only' situation.

I'm going to check the sunroof tracks / drainage tmrw.

and yes the battery drain thing is pretty nuts, and I've seen on the fourms I'm not the only person experiencing that. I've never heard of a car doing that ever. Esp not one this expensive.

Checked the sunroof tracks, can't seem to see any blockage. the stripping is lifted slightly, going to try and glue it down or something. This just started to happen last week, not sure why still....

Did a leak down test, definitely coming out of the bottom of the door, removed the light at the bottom of the door and it seems like the vapor barrier is lifted there.

Going to have to make a service appointment because the x5 door card removal is a little more gut wrenching than my e92. bleh

Took out the plug from the bottom of the door for now until I can get it to the dealer, hopefully this helps for the time being.

did you buy your car new? I have read many things about people taking the doors apart for numerous resons and not properly replacing the vapor barrier which prevents water from getting into the car.

Bought it CPO (its an 07). Have a service appointment on the books for next week, we'll see what they say.

It is the vapor barrier.

I had to have the left rear door corrected twice. Mine had a small pin hole.

The second time the tech damaged the trim and I had to get it replaced. He used screw drivers to pry it off and dented the metal under the door handle.

Replaced the vapor barrier, hopefully all fixed!

Update: after replacing the vapor barrier (3 days in the dealership), I noticed the door card wasn't sitting flat on the door, aka the blue clips weren't replaced when they put it back on and they stripped out the two screws on the bottom of the door. At this point, I washed the car, door didn't leak.

I brought it back up to have that gap corrected, and they brought the car out, still not fixed, they went back, put new clips on and the gap was corrected, but I just washed the car and the door leaks again. ugh.

Is this really that difficult? dealership is 25ish miles away plus time off etc to bring it there is killing me, if they can't fix it this time, might be looking at trading the car in.

Oh and to top it off, when they were doing the break pads, they put a nice gash in my right rear rim, just found it when I was scrubbing the wheels and the "cover up" they put on it came off. /angry

There is a water diverter inside the door. It directs the water from above (e.g. widow) so that it properly flows to down to the drain hole below. If not properly installed or torn it lets water inside the car.

Thanks, I'll implore them to check that.

Going back to the dealership next week, to hopefully be fixed....Definitely not happy.