Another Water Leak Thread, Oh Boy!

[Dan Lockwood]

Okay, I've read all the threads about water leaks, including leaky underwear...

I know I had the third brake light leak. When we purchased our '12 RAM 3500 CC last July we didn't notice anything about the rear headliner, but after I started finding water in the storage area on the driver's side, the first thing I did was to pull out the brake light and see what was going on.

It had rained the day before and when I pulled the light housing there was water in the sheetmetal pocket behind the housing. I cleaned it all up and at the time thought with some sealer I could take care of it. But all I did was make it extremely hard to remove to "fix" it again.

But during the time I had it apart, I had taped plastic over the brake light area and when it rained again, low and behold, just as much water in the storage area again. So I know it was something over and above the brake light being the ONLY issue.

Next was to pull out the entire rear seat assemblies and cab back insulation panel to get a good look at things. This is the truck that I had mentioned earlier in posts about belonging to a contractor that traveled to grainery sites and left his windows down while inside working. The entire truck is filled with this tan powder finer than talcum powder. There's also no cab filter in this truck so I'm sure the problem with my poor air flow from the AC can be attributed to the powder being sucked into the evaporator core in the dash and I'm sure it's filled up like mud. Something I don't look forward to fixing.

Well anyway, the rear cab vents were all covered in the same powder and with a bit of shower spraying of the rear of the cab, they both leaked drips, but hard to believe it would leak enough to overnight fill up the storage pockets with a couple inches of water. So after doing some other tracking and water spraying over the rear outside, I found water coming in both rear cab corners from the upper sheetmetal. With all of the double and triple layers of sheetmetal, it's going to be very difficult to diagnose.

With all of my work so far, I've eliminated the water leaks to just a very small trickle down the driver's rear cab corner. I could probably live with this as it's that small of a leak, but since it's all torn down and I don't drive the truck daily, I'm going to press on.

I found a slight leak at the driver's side lower rear window area in the sheetmetal under the window weather seal. I had purchased some strip dum dum at the local body supple place to use on the brake light and the satellite antenna. This is the black strip caulk and after purchasing the new gasket from Detroit Diesel, I curved the brake light sheetmetal to better conform to the light housing. I found that the center top of the rood panel was bent inward and even with the new seal it would not seal. But with a bit of tweaking, I got a great seal. THEN as an added insurance policy, I used the black strip caulk and rolled a bead around the top and sides of the brake light housing. Then use a round paddle to neatly contour the caulk into the groove. With the truck being black, it helped to hide any of the strip caulk. Did the same around the satellite antenna.

I guess now I still have to find the leak on the driver's side. I plan on taping up all the holes on the upper area and then using my air hose I hope to pressurize the cab corner and will have the wife spray soap outside and look for bubbles. I suspect that it may be something under the side weather seal of the rear window. But that weather seal is very narrow and it tucked into the cab area very tightly.

If that area does show as leaks, is there anyway to get under the lip of the seal with something to seal it up under the flap? I was thinking maybe a very thin tube that could be fitted to a caulk gun and just slid under the flap while pushing in sealer, but not sure if that's even possible.

Any suggestions? Oh, when I start to do the testing this weekend, I will start the soap spraying low and work our way upward.

Sorry for the novel again.

I do appreciate all the experience help here on the forum, THANKS!

 

[PoMansRam]

Do you see breaks in the paint in these areas? Reason I ask is, I fought the same fight with my 2017 Ram 1500 quad cab. No joy with multiple 3rd brake light attempts. Thought it was the SiriusXM bump up top, thought it was under the rubber strips in the rain gutters..

Wound up being a shoddy install of the aftermarket rear glass that was done before I bought the truck used. I paid an excellent glass guy to troubleshoot and he found it, demonstrated it to me and had to remove and replace the rear glass to fix it.

It's almost impossible to tell exactly where the water is coming from unless you drop/droop the headliner.

 

[TheEnder]

Okay, I've read all the threads about water leaks, including leaky underwear...

I know I had the third brake light leak. When we purchased our '12 RAM 3500 CC last July we didn't notice anything about the rear headliner, but after I started finding water in the storage area on the driver's side, the first thing I did was to pull out the brake light and see what was going on.

It had rained the day before and when I pulled the light housing there was water in the sheetmetal pocket behind the housing. I cleaned it all up and at the time thought with some sealer I could take care of it. But all I did was make it extremely hard to remove to "fix" it again.

But during the time I had it apart, I had taped plastic over the brake light area and when it rained again, low and behold, just as much water in the storage area again. So I know it was something over and above the brake light being the ONLY issue.

Next was to pull out the entire rear seat assemblies and cab back insulation panel to get a good look at things. This is the truck that I had mentioned earlier in posts about belonging to a contractor that traveled to grainery sites and left his windows down while inside working. The entire truck is filled with this tan powder finer than talcum powder. There's also no cab filter in this truck so I'm sure the problem with my poor air flow from the AC can be attributed to the powder being sucked into the evaporator core in the dash and I'm sure it's filled up like mud. Something I don't look forward to fixing.

Well anyway, the rear cab vents were all covered in the same powder and with a bit of shower spraying of the rear of the cab, they both leaked drips, but hard to believe it would leak enough to overnight fill up the storage pockets with a couple inches of water. So after doing some other tracking and water spraying over the rear outside, I found water coming in both rear cab corners from the upper sheetmetal. With all of the double and triple layers of sheetmetal, it's going to be very difficult to diagnose.

With all of my work so far, I've eliminated the water leaks to just a very small trickle down the driver's rear cab corner. I could probably live with this as it's that small of a leak, but since it's all torn down and I don't drive the truck daily, I'm going to press on.

I found a slight leak at the driver's side lower rear window area in the sheetmetal under the window weather seal. I had purchased some strip dum dum at the local body supple place to use on the brake light and the satellite antenna. This is the black strip caulk and after purchasing the new gasket from Detroit Diesel, I curved the brake light sheetmetal to better conform to the light housing. I found that the center top of the rood panel was bent inward and even with the new seal it would not seal. But with a bit of tweaking, I got a great seal. THEN as an added insurance policy, I used the black strip caulk and rolled a bead around the top and sides of the brake light housing. Then use a round paddle to neatly contour the caulk into the groove. With the truck being black, it helped to hide any of the strip caulk. Did the same around the satellite antenna.

I guess now I still have to find the leak on the driver's side. I plan on taping up all the holes on the upper area and then using my air hose I hope to pressurize the cab corner and will have the wife spray soap outside and look for bubbles. I suspect that it may be something under the side weather seal of the rear window. But that weather seal is very narrow and it tucked into the cab area very tightly.

If that area does show as leaks, is there anyway to get under the lip of the seal with something to seal it up under the flap? I was thinking maybe a very thin tube that could be fitted to a caulk gun and just slid under the flap while pushing in sealer, but not sure if that's even possible.

Any suggestions? Oh, when I start to do the testing this weekend, I will start the soap spraying low and work our way upward.

Sorry for the novel again.

I do appreciate all the experience help here on the forum, THANKS!

My 1500 had a rear leak that i thought was coming from the 3rd brake like but it turned out to be coming from my rear door seals, i cleaned them with leather cleaner and never had an issue with them again. They need to be replaced as they’re “flat” in a way and don’t allow for a perfect seal.


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[firehawk618]

Power sliding rear window? That's where mine was letting massive amounts of water in at.

 

[Dan Lockwood]

Thanks for the suggestions.

My only leak at the present seems to be coming down from the driver's rear cab corner and comes out under the double sheetmetal layer and follows the tan body seem sealer and then into the storage area under the driver's side rear seat.

This is what my vents looked like when I started this mess.

As I've said prior, this truck was exposed to tons of elevator dust for several years. Many of those years it was parked idling while he worked inside the truck as an office. So all this powdered "dust" got circulated throughout the truck's ventilation system.

They both started to leak shortly after I started showering the rear of the cab with water.

I figured if I could take them out, I could do a fix on them. So I did remove the driver's side first and on the rear I cut a one gallon antifreeze bottle's label panel up just to the right size that it fit inside the outer lip of the grill area on the outside. I then used dum-dum to stick it to the rear of the vent so as to cover the whole grille area while still leaving the bottom of the cover open to venting. Then a little flat black to make it look pretty. So then onto the passenger's side to remove that vent.

Okay, it popped out of the cab, but does NOT fit between the box front and the cab rear. There is NO way to remove that right rear vent without removing the box and moving it an inch back to get room to drop it down. Or at least that's what I'm thinking.

With my syphon air blow nozzle, I had hooked up to plain water, I was able to blow it out with a water/air process to clean it up. I did the same thing to the left side vent while I had that one outside the truck. I cleaned the cab back sheetmetal and rubber lips on the vents and pulled them back into the cab. They both now seem to be water tight so I'll leave well enough alone.

Yesterday I got out my air nozzle and blew all around the left side rear glass area while squirting down the outside with soapy water to look for bubbles. No matter where I blew around the back glass or inside the upper cab corner as far as I could reach without dropping the headliner, I saw NO bubbles around any of the seams or rear glass area.

So for now I'm stumped as to what to do next.

I greatly appreciate all of the suggestions and thoughts you've all been throwing my way.

I'm not going to put everything back together just yet though. I don't have to drive the truck for anything in the near future, so I'll let it go through a few rain cycles to see just how well I've tightened it up.

Thanks and keep the suggestions and thoughts rolling in...

Have a great week!

 

[Dan Lockwood]

SORRY, this double posted. When I hit post for the first time it usually takes me back to the main screen forum, but this time it didn't. So I hit post again and low and behold I got a double post and cannot find anywhere to delete the second post. Sorry guys...

Thanks for the suggestions.

My only leak at the present seems to be coming down from the driver's rear cab corner and comes out under the double sheetmetal layer and follows the tan body seem sealer and then into the storage area under the driver's side rear seat.

This is what my vents looked like when I started this mess.

As I've said prior, this truck was exposed to tons of elevator dust for several years. Many of those years it was parked idling while he worked inside the truck as an office. So all this powdered "dust" got circulated throughout the truck's ventilation system.

They both started to leak shortly after I started showering the rear of the cab with water.

I figured if I could take them out, I could do a fix on them. So I did remove the driver's side first and on the rear I cut a one gallon antifreeze bottle's label panel up just to the right size that it fit inside the outer lip of the grill area on the outside. I then used dum-dum to stick it to the rear of the vent so as to cover the whole grille area while still leaving the bottom of the cover open to venting. Then a little flat black to make it look pretty. So then onto the passenger's side to remove that vent.

Okay, it popped out of the cab, but does NOT fit between the box front and the cab rear. There is NO way to remove that right rear vent without removing the box and moving it an inch back to get room to drop it down. Or at least that's what I'm thinking.

With my syphon air blow nozzle, I had hooked up to plain water, I was able to blow it out with a water/air process to clean it up. I did the same thing to the left side vent while I had that one outside the truck. I cleaned the cab back sheetmetal and rubber lips on the vents and pulled them back into the cab. They both now seem to be water tight so I'll leave well enough alone.

Yesterday I got out my air nozzle and blew all around the left side rear glass area while squirting down the outside with soapy water to look for bubbles. No matter where I blew around the back glass or inside the upper cab corner as far as I could reach without dropping the headliner, I saw NO bubbles around any of the seams or rear glass area.

So for now I'm stumped as to what to do next.

I greatly appreciate all of the suggestions and thoughts you've all been throwing my way.

I'm not going to put everything back together just yet though. I don't have to drive the truck for anything in the near future, so I'll let it go through a few rain cycles to see just how well I've tightened it up.

Thanks and keep the suggestions and thoughts rolling in...

Have a great week!

 

[Dan Lockwood]

The truck is back together!

I didn't get it 100% on the driver's back corner, but I did know exactly where the water comes down from the laminated sheetmetal etc. The water leak was 90% improved and I doubt that the luggage well would ever fill up again as the jute backing would just wick it up and evaporate the water.

So I went up in the corner under the window and made a little dam or funnel. I drilled a hole in the bottom corner of the cab and ran a thin wall vinyl 3/8" tube from through the floor hole up and into the little funnel/dam. I used the dum dum and molded it all together and the truck has now been through a really rough night of solid rain and NO WATER on the lower floor of the cab. That's when I decided to put it all back together.

If you can't beat'em, join'em…

Thanks for all the great suggestions on the water leak, very much appreciated.

 

[Dodge 1500 4X4]

Wow great job, I've been following this whole thread, you must really like this truck to give it a extended life thats what we're all about here to try and help each other.

P/S Dan you need to give us some pics of your Rig!!!

 

[bigdodge]

Cab seams on top of the truck under the black stripping. That seam is painted over and I found the paint cracked and would changed in rain right down to the corners. I got some kind of window sealer from a body shop and payed that over the seam and then the weather strip. Never an issue since

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[Dan Lockwood]

We've just gone through tons of rain in the past week and so far, NO LEAKS!

The floor has been dry under each side cab corners.

I do appreciate all the help and suggestions, thanks!