boblee302

Results of my own (now resolved) sunroof leak. First, I read other related posts here to familiarize myself with known issues. After doing that I was able to diagnose and fix the problem fairly quickly. Mine is 2006 Fusion. My car is always parked on a slight incline with the front of the car pointing down. After heavy rain the driver side floorpan fills with water. If the car is parked "flat" there is no obvious water accumulation. Diagnosis: I parked the car in the usual inclined position. Pulled up the carpet on the driver side and used towel to dry the area. Poured 2 gallons of water over the windshield and let it drain down thru the airbox intake (cowl). No water on the floor. Opened the sunroof and located the 2 drain holes along the front edge of the sunroof drain pan (other posts here say there are 4 drain tubes- the 2 front drains are easily accessible- I did not look for the rear ones). Used a kitchen syringe to squirt water down into the drain holes. When putting water into the driver side drain hole, the water immediately filled the driver side floorpan. To see where it "should" be going, I also squirted water into the passenger side drain hole. In that case the water drains out from seams between the fender sheetmetal just behind the front wheel well. Resolution: The 2 drain tubes are 3/8 inch clear hose that run from the sunroof pan thru the roof pillars and down behind the kick panel in the foot well area. You can see them without removing any trim, but to get access to the end of the drain tube you have to remove the kick panel. On the driver side there is also a large bundle of wires that needs to be pulled aside. The tube just ends (and drains into) a small cavity/pocket formed where several pieces of body sheet metal meet. This pocket is about the size of your fist. Mine was full of water. If you get more water than the pocket will hold the rest spills over the top of the pocket and into the floorpan. You cannot effectively do a visual inspect of the pocket area, even with a mirror, but I was able to feel around with my fingers in search of a drain hole. There is none. In fact, every seam between the various sheet metal pieces was filled some some rubbery foam stuff. Clearly, the water is supposed to drain from this area into yet another inaccessible sheet metal cavity below, but it was not happening. Was looking for a way to drill a hole in this area, but finally gave up and just starting pulling out chunks of the rubbery foam stuff. Eventually I opened up a seam gap and the water drained out. Problem solved. I intend to go back and use a screwdriver to make a bend in the sheetmetal seam and create a more deliberate drain gap. I am sure that the car has had this problem forever and that it only got bad after enough dirt had flushed down the drain tubes (yes, there was plenty of dirt there) to clog up the smallish holes in the semi-porous foam stuff. If you are getting water on the headliner, it is likely that the drains are plugged and water is backed up all the way to sunroof pan. When the sunroof pan fills up, or if you deliberately plug the drain holes, the water has nowhere to go and will certainly (if only slowly) drain into the cabin. It also depends upon whether the car is parked level or not. In my case all the sunroof drain water was being forced down a single drain tube (driver's side, front).