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Cowl water leak update  2 Saabers Like This Post!
Posted by Snowmobile [Email]  (#686)  [Profile/Gallery]
(more from Snowmobile) on Fri, 25 Oct 2024 13:05:32
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So earlier this summer, I discovered a water leak in one of our 9-5s (2004 sedan) where the passenger side footwell carpets were soaking wet front and back. Much tearing apart of the interior later, I discovered it was a rust through where the firewall meets the fender. There is a wedge there that Saab filled with sealant wax from the factory, but if/when that fails, it fills up with water and debris. It is pretty bad mechanical design imho to rely on a sealant vs gravity with water... I assume water was meant to drain back the other way so long as the wax seal was intact.
In the end, I removed as much rust as possible, did a por15 repair over the summer and just recently reinforced that with a fiberglass repair. It would be better to weld but I would have had to strip the entire dash and firewall area of the car to safely weld, and I have limited welding experience and no equipment. It really is not easy access! Where the wax was, I filled with bondo reinforced with chopped fiberglass strands. I could not think of a better material unfortunately to fill that wedge cavity as it probably should be able to withstand some heat from the engine bay, so something like spray foam (even fire block) might be bad. At least these materials will not rust and hopefully water will now run back. The goal is to at least get a few more years out of the car so I can hit 400k km.
The main tip I wanted to pass along - I had trouble getting a good cowl/window interface with the z molding (though it otherwise looked promising and was a good suggestion). In the end, I ordered "23 ft cuttable t-shaped car sunroof adhesive rubber seal strip" off Amazon (there are various Chinese sellers). I will post pictures later when I have a bit more time, but this has 2 skinny strips of 3M adhesive and so it sticks to the glass as well and makes up for some of the irregularities and waveyness in the cowl. I will report back how well it holds up over time...
Some other details - the open net filter stuff in the corners of the cowls to keep leaves out had disintegrated beyond reuse, so I caulked in fiberglass with DAP dynaflex 230 sealant. That is holding up well so far.
This is a bit of a hack job, it's not a show car, but I'm posting in case someone else runs into the same leak. Advice for past me: make sure to keep the middle drain clear so less water drains down the corners of the cowl.
, Fri, 25 Oct 2024 13:05:32 <-- Viewing This Message
2
, Tue, 10 Dec 2024 08:34:12, Fri, 25 Oct 2024 13:10:36
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