so i’ve got a 1990 VW caddy, recently bought. turns out the door windows aren’t water tight – through the scraper seals i believe (i can see the gaps…)

with the recent rain i’ve been getting a puddle in the bottom of the doors.

today i’ve bought some dehumidifying things, a car cover and, off the internet, new window seals.

all the online advice says not to put a car cover on a wet car – it’s due to rain for a week!

so, i’ve been replenishing a stock of kitchen towels in the bottom of the doors (thank god there’s no door cards in there, else i’d not have noticed!) every couple of hours, and in between rain showers, i’ve dried around the seals off and used electrical tape (the only stuff i could find) to heath-robinson a better seal around the windows.

is there anything else i can do?! I’ve a garage, but due to the number of bikes/workshop table/asguard etc i can’t put the caddy in there…

fortunately it doesn’t look like the doors are rusty inside, and am sure in the time it’ll take between now, it drying out, and putting the cover on, it’ll not rust, but it’s a bit of a worry!

how easy will new window seals be to fit?

Are there no drain holes along the bottom of the doors? Could they have been painted over or something?

I was of the impression that the wiper seals aren’t intended to keep the doors 100% dry, meaning that drains were crucial

ooh… i’ll ask on a forum thingy…

This ^^^

Are there no drain holes along the bottom of the doors? Could they have been painted over or something?

I was of the impression that the wiper seals aren’t intended to keep the doors 100% dry, meaning that drains were crucial

Yes – water should be able to get in through the wiper seal and out through the drain holes. A bit of a Seat / VW bugbear though(the old Caddy’s are really a Seat with a VW badge) is this water leaking through the door card and getting into the car interior rather than draining from the bottom of the door.

If you google fixes for leaky seat leon doors you’ll find a few DIY tutorials to fix it – look for ‘Butyl Strip’ on ebay – a sort of super-sticky blutack which you can replace the failed VW sealant with. You basically open up the door interior separate the plastic seal inside and replace the glue/sealant (which has gone brittle and cracked) with the butyl. Its a job for 4 hands.

done a bit of digging – there should be drainage holes. there’s no door cards or plastic shooting in the doors at present (it’s a project…) – but yeah, the well of the doors as such is full of gunk and, now, water.

can’t find anywhere showing where the drainage holes should be though :-/

They’ll turn up wherever you point your drill 😉

Yeah, there should be drainage holes of some sort. I can’t remember what they look like an old caddy, but they typically vary from physically obvious holes in the door frame panel, to just open gaps/slits between the door skin and door frame. They may even just be a single open joint on each corner.

If the doors have been re-skinned at some point, it could well be that the holes have been sealed up.

Most vehicle doors will have water run down inside them, as window seals are rarely 100% effective. You just need to make sure the water has somewhere to get out.

right, found one hole per door. cleared a lot of gunk out from inside the drivers door especially (which may, or may not have been waxoil type stuff, plus actual gunk).

i’m half tempted to drill though, as the hole is half way along the door, and not where the water is pooling. will have to be done another day though – cant be that difficult, can it?!

plenty of water still coming in, but new seals should, i think, help with that – might need them for the small triangular window too :-/

bloody money pit!

Drain holes should be (sorry to be obvious) along the bottom edge of the inner skin but outside of the door seal area. They can get gunked up so need a bit of a clean out with a pipe cleaner (can you still buy them?).

Another thing to check is your door seals will probably also have drain holes and be a hollow tube like a tubular tyre but with more holes. They can also get full of gunk and then water starts getting in at the bottom of the door. A tell tale sign is a wet sill/carpet around the bottom of the door. We had one car that has a 1″ paddling pool in the footwell just because of the door seal drains being blocked up. You may need to make a slice in the bottom.

Worth checking owners forums for common faults.

There should be an inner membrane on the door behind the door card to stop water going down the window seal from coming out of the door through the door card area on the inside of the door seal but if the drains are blocked it can fill up and find holes.

PS don’t drill any new drain holes as it will cause rust very quickly.