I have a serious leakage problem in my 91 Civic hatch. The taillights are letting the water in (i think, thats the area it flows from anyway.) and i am replacing the gaskets and siliconing everything. What do i have to remove to get the tailights out? Do i take off the black plastic on the bottom of the car below where the hatch meets? Or do i have to remove both rear panels too? i am sick of having a pond in my hatch and wanna fix this. Do you think that new foam double-upped (from wal-mart) and silicon will stop the leak?

 

inside of the car..theres a rear panel that has 2 seperate plastic pieces that come off for access to the bulbs..then u'll notice 2 more that wrap around to the side. take all 4 of those off..and if i remember right there is six nuts on each side to remove the taillight..find all 6 and keep the nuts in a safe place..your lights might not pop out right away..so be careful and take a screwdriver..put it in between the side of the light and the body..pry it off a little bit and it should come right off after that..very simple except working around the plastic..i just took all mine off since i painted the inside anyway..

 

So I don't have to remove the entire panel? i just take out the four little pop-outs?

 

Just open the panels and there will be some nuts. Just unscrew and you can get the lights off
i had the same problem with the leaking. I put some caulking arround the hole in the body and arround the light where it touched the gasket. that worked good and i had no more leaks

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by footstinker &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Just open the panels and there will be some nuts. Just unscrew and you can get the lights off
i had the same problem with the leaking. I put some caulking arround the hole in the body and arround the light where it touched the gasket. that worked good and i had no more leaks</TD></TR></TABLE>

Cool. Looks like i'm headed to Wal-mart for foam and silicon.

 

Could be coming from the side windows-theseals could be bad. That is the problem with my '91 hatch.

 

It looked liekwa ter had dripped onto the interior from it, but how do i "patch" the seals around the windows so it won't leak?

 

i would just buy new gaskets from the dealer, dumping silicone into your car is sloppy and you'll most likely break your lights the next time you try to take them out cause the silicone will be like glue

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by godruler &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i would just buy new gaskets from the dealer, dumping silicone into your car is sloppy and you'll most likely break your lights the next time you try to take them out cause the silicone will be like glue</TD></TR></TABLE>

Dude, it will peel right off of the body. Maybe not the plastic, but a razor blade will take the bulk off and the rest rubs off. Use the right kind of silicone and you're fine. Anyway, how do I fix the side windows to stop leaking?

 

New window seals, or try to readjust the rear window latch. Mine can not be done easily because the screws are seized in and now stripped.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by d15hatch &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">try to readjust the rear window latch. </TD></TR></TABLE>

Cool! So just make it contact "tighter" to the weather stripping? I never thought of that. I'll try it.