I made this post yesterday after finding water in my spare tire well: https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=1043545

Well we've had so much rain this week, and the moisture inside my car has gotten so bad, that even the carpet and floor mats are soaking wet.

I guess I will try to go about fixing or making new taillight gaskets this weekend, but I gotta get this stuff dried out somehow. Any ideas? Forecast says sunny and highs in the mid 60's for Saturday. Can I do something in addition to just letting the car sit outside all opened up for hours?

 

leave the car running for a while with the heat on full blast?

 

Go to Home Depot or Lowe's and get a heat gun. They're typically used to melt the glue that is used to lay down tile. I own one for changing hockey blades on hockey sticks (again to melt the glue).

Turn it on full blast and comb the area with it for awhile. This should work, itll take time, but it depends on how much water is there and whether its puddled or just soaked...Take out the floormats first, obviously, and lay those out to dry also. I had a similar issue with moisture on the inside of my '94 Honda Civic, it was a pain...

 

ughh I sure hope the humidity is low this weekend... I think it's starting to smell inside my car.

 

you can rent a machine called an extractor its like a heavy duty vac. you first spray the included soapy film then you run it like a vac going over whatever parts you want to dry out. you want to get as much moisture as you can out of the car otherwise mold and smell will be come a problem

 

after this procedure the carpet and mats will be damp to the touch. you can leave the mats out to dry over a period of time. spraying them occasionally with some lysol or any odor ridding substance is a good idea. leave your window cracked just a little otherwise the slight moisture in the car will cause your condensation inside your car hope this helps you out

 

You could lay down some newspapers and mash those down, replace with dry ones as soon as the origional ones are saturated, or pretty wet. I use this method to dry my shoes, and works pretty well. I know a car and shoes are a far cry from each other, but, it's still fabric and water. It helps pull a lot of the water out pretty quickly.

 

wet/dry vacuum, hairdryer, or dehumidifier are a few options (that i have around my house at least)

 

Sounds like the foamy/rubbery seal thing on the tail lights is in bad shape or missing. Get that replaced. This happened to me when I swapped tail lights that didn't have the seal thing. I used an industrial strength vacuum and sucked up all the water. Then I left my car out in the sun with my doors & windows open. It was summer time so the water dried up within a day or two.

 

I replaced my original taillight gaskets about 1.5 yrs ago w/ some that I made myself following the method that H-T used Ragejed uses to make taillight gaskets. I used carpet tape to laminate 2 layers of the foam rubber together (to match the thickness of the OEM gaskets) but I think the tape is failing or something.

 

There are people on Ebay selling stock 94-97 tail lights w/gaskets for really cheap. You could do that instead of buying new OEM ones from Honda.

 

What I did was this:

Keep the car outside with everything open and exposed. See if you can do it when it's sunny and kinda hot. Throw in some dryer sheets to absorb the smell. Then at night if it's still kinda wet, put it back indoors and put some new dryer sheets in there over night. Those things work wonders.

 

Step one: get a box fan.

Step two: open the doors, blow the box fan through them (turn off interior lights )

Step three: get a box of fabric softeners to absorb the bad smells in the car. EDIT- ^beat me to it.

Step four: find out where else your leaking from, taillights generally don't soak the entire car.

 

shop vac

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by notstock93 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Step four: find out where else your leaking from, taillights generally don't soak the entire car.</TD></TR></TABLE>
Well what happened to me is that the water came in through the tail lights and then it made a big puddle in my spare tire well. I drove the car (not knowing there was water in my hatch) and when I went down a hill all this water started rushing down my carpet under my feet. Thank god I was able to clean up the mess quickly and stopped the problem from happening again.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Calsonic &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
Well what happened to me is that the water came in through the tail lights and then it made a big puddle in my spare tire well. I drove the car (not knowing there was water in my hatch) and when I went down a hill all this water started rushing down my carpet under my feet. Thank god I was able to clean up the mess quickly and stopped the problem from happening again.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I had my spare well fill up too, but it was a combination of the taillight gaskets being non-existent, a hole in part of some body work I had done from a hit and run (located in the taillight indention for those who care) and my sunroof drains.

I had to sop it up with beach towels

 

Yeah so I started stripping out the interior tonight so I can let it dry out. I found water pooled up INSIDE my spare wheel! Now how in the hell could that happen, seeing as how the middle of the wheel is raised up off the bottom of the well (since that hold-down bracket is underneath it).

This sucks, my carpet is soaked, floormats are soaked, cargo carpet was damp and wet around the edges, the lower half of my rear seat weighs twice as much as normal because the seat foam is FULL of water.

And I'm positive it's the taillight gaskets. In fact, it appears to be ONLY the driver side taillight gasket at fault! I took the driver side taillight off tonight and found the bottom edge of the gasket soaked and dripping with water. I also poured out some water from inside the taillight.

When I took off the pass. side taillight, the gasket only had a tiny little wet spot in one corner, not really much to worry about. It did not have water inside it, either.

It's in the garage right now all opened up, w/ a box fan sitting on top of the spare tire and blowing towards the front (all seats are out except the driver seat). I suppose this weekend I'm going to try to pull out everything to the point where I can fully remove the entire interior carpet.

 

get some dye and paint it back to the normal color while its out. The water tends to funk things up, color wise.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by PatrickGSR94 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">And I'm positive it's the taillight gaskets. </TD></TR></TABLE>

Mine was the same way. Faulty taillight gaskets caused EVERYTHING in the car to get soaked. Front floors, all of the carpets, rear seats, pool of water in the spare tire AND tire well.

 

I'm trying to decide whether to drop $50 on new OEM gaskets or try again at making a set myself. I HATE driving my car when it's stripped out, so I want to get this fixed ASAP.

 

do what i did patrick, i took the tailights out, and where u see the indentation of the tailight around the gasket ,i just put a nice thick bead of rubber silicone around that,stuck it back onto the tailight,tightened it down and all was well...

 

Yeah well, what about when/if I need to take them off again (for paint purposes or whatever other reasons)? I remember when I used to have my old Camry, a bodyshop slathered on some black rubber gasket junk around the taillights, and it was a royal mess.

 

when i did mines i sealed the gasket to the tailight,there was no glue behind the gasket to the body of the car, and long as its done neatly,u wont have a mess..it worked fine for me..

 

Well I would think that you would have to seal the gasket to the body, since the water is obviously coming in between the gasket and the body and getting inside the car.

 

i hear what u saying,but im just throwing ideas out there that worked for me