Hey Rick! I'm so sorry if I didn't reply to your email personally, I thought I did. I really appreciate the trouble you went to to help me out, amazing really between 2 guys who have never even met! DMC owners are cool people. Anyway, here's the whole text of Ricks email to me, advising me on where to find the roof leaks... Thanks, John Dore, VIN #3810. --------------RICKS MESSAGE BELOW!!-------------- Hi John. I'm glad your car made it to Ireland okay. I was wondering that. I hope things are good at college. I'm sorry I couldn't join you for a pint in Rhode Island. I've taken apart my car's roof, and while doing it analysed the rainwater flow patterns. The biggest entry point for the water is through/around the horizontal seal at the top of the door. I can't really imagine this seal ever working completely, even when new. At best, it will limit how much water ends up in the "gulley". I presume that the designers intended this water to run down the gulleys along side the periphery of the door. I can't know this for sure, it just looks that way from the design. I'd bet a dollar that either: 1. rust is forming on the bottom of your roof support, forcing a break in the seal between the roof support and the fiberglass underbody. There are a few holes for fasteners around there that might be the entry point for water into the passenger compartment. If the wet spot is in the center of the headliner, I'd suspect the six holes in the center. There are other holes, mostly around the periphery of the roof support, but I don't remember off the top of my head where they all are. The easy cure: run a sealant bead along the edge of the metal roof support and along the hinge edges. The good, but difficult and invasive cure: remove the roof support, and get the bead under the roof support and under the hinges. 2. Water is running through the holes where the door wiring enters the roof, and flowing through the hollow roof support to the front or rear edge of the roof support. If the wet spot is at the rear of the headliner, near the window, I'd suspect this. No easy cure, as far as I know. If it's at the front, I'd suspect either 2. or: 3. Water is running over the front edge of the t-panel under the top windshield bezel(exceedingly likely) or in front of the seals at the front top edge of the door, where it encounters a stainless steel bracket, which is attached to the underbody with several mild steel fasteners. The fasteners definitely are exposed to a lot of water, and tend to rust severely because of contact with the big stainless steel bracket, at least they did on my car. Water is probably running under the bracket, which may have partially dislodged from fastener failure, and through holes in the windshield bead, or through cracks in the fiberglass, which seems inclined to spall in that area, to make the inside of your windshield wet. I tend to think that freezing of water soaked fiberglass causes the spalling in the underbody near the windshield, but I'm not sure. This problem has a really good, and only moderately invasive cure. The top aluminum bezel part at the windshield is not horribly difficult(or easy) to remove, if my memory serves me. After unscrewing and removing it, by pulling it toward the back of the car (counterintuitively), you can put beads of sealant at the fasteners, around the bracket, and at the top of the windshield. Don't use a lot of force removing or installing this part; it touches the top edge of the windshield, which is fragile. It would be really easy to break the windshield by overmuscling this bezel part. You may need to add new fasteners to the bracket. On my car I had to, because some of the old fasteners wrecked the integrity of the fiberglass at the attachment site. When I reinstalled mine, I ran a length of electrical tape along the top edge of the windshield to cushion the contact with the bezel. It was also kind of tricky getting the bezel piece to interface with the bracket. I think that 3 is most likely, 1 is somewhat likely, and 2 in unlikely. I don't think there are really any good cures for these troubles short of rebuilding the affected joints. If it were my car, and teardown wasn't an option, I'd cover it up in the rain, at the very least the top of the car. On my car, I was able to rebuild all of the joints, and waterproof them at least as well as the factory did, and I'm still skeptical that it won't leak. It's an intrinsically problematic design. I'll be carrying a cover in my car at all times, and if it rains, I'm pulling over and covering the thing until it stops. I've done all of these things on my car, but I had the benefit of having the thing dissassembled, so I might be oversimplifying some aspect of the process when it's done on an assembled car. I've made that mistake once before passing along experience with my car, which is a little atypical in some respects. The car cover is the easiest way out. Sorry for the novel( oh wait, it's non-fiction) Rick Gendreau 11472 --- In DMCForum@xxxx, "John Dore" <dmcjohn@xxxx> wrote: > Hey Lads, > Well for those of you who were wondering, my DeLorean has arrived > safely in Ireland! (I shipped it home from Boston). > Anyway, only when it has been parked outside in Irish weather (i.e. > very wet) have I noticed that my center headliners are getting > saturated. What should I look for? I removed the screws holding the > center section to the roof along the door seals, put some silicone > sealant under them and screwed it back on but this did not help. > > I recovered the headliners myself over the summer, and was careful to > trim the bits of material that fit under the door seals so that they > would not stick out from the doorseals and soak up any water in the > gulley... > > Also, my windshield is soaking wet on the inside after rain... > > Where is all this moisture/rain getting in!??? > > Thanks! > John Dore, Limerick, Ireland, VIN #3810. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: DMCForum-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
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