Update: (Any help anyone can give me with any of this would be very much appreciated..especially removal of the backrest)

Door Seal Leak: The water pools up along the weather striping as you can see in the picture, and when sitting inside it then begins to run in and that is what is causing my pool of water in the back seat as the trail it takes is the exact one that I see by the water stains on the carpet. This also explains why the carpet up front is wet too, as it pools in the same spot, just at the front of the door and runs in there too.

Driver side:



Passenger side:




Sunroof Leak: I am not sure how the drains work or where they are, but when I pull the headliner down enough to see underneath when the hose is running outside, water is running down in a few spots.

If you look at this first picture you can see the sunroof shade off to the bottom left. There is almost an arrow made from it pointing at where one of the leaks is:



This next one is looking back towards the rear of the car under the headliner. You can see that wire hanging down and if you look just a little to the right of that you can see a water stain on the board of the headliner. It is dripping here as well, which then runs towards the corner of the headliner and down the trim by the rear seat, and then out under the seat.



Now what confuses me, is the first time I ran water and sat in the car it poured in like crazy, later on when I did it again (which I was not excited about doing) it did not do this, it just trickled on the headliner when looking back with the flaslight, and I had the hose exactly the same way. This makes me believe something might have been plugged and now it is less plugged...or something along those lines


Trunk leak looks like it is comming down along the tail lights then there is a piece of plastic trim that runs along the bottom of the trunk opening and the bumper, which has a space where water can run in. This is a design issue in my opinion as it isn't broken or anything, just stupidly designed.

Ok with all those leaks that need to be fixed, lets start with the sunroof. I NEED to get the backrest in the back seat out so I can remove the trim/package tray so I can drop the headliner. I took the bolts out that hold it, and the seatbelts, to the car, but it is still attached at the top somehow and I have damn near broke the thing trying to get it out. HELP ME.

I don't know what to look for until I get the headliner out. Also the headliner needs to be replaced as the water running on it is why it has gone bad so I need to replace that while I am at it.

Now for the door weather striping, what should I do? It is not dry or cracked and it looks like it is serving its purpose, but somehow it is still getting in and when looking at it I am not sure what I can do to change this other than running some silicone along it, which I think will do nothing. Any suggestions?

The trunk leak doesn't concern me as much, as it doesn't require me to have the whole interior out to fix. I will worry about that once I fix the other leaks.

It all started with vacuuming up some water in the carpet..and now has turned into a bigger project than I had thought.


I also had the car parked right in the center of the driveway, which means I can't get my Van out for work tomorrow, or her trailblazer in the driveway...wasn't thinking..so I made a makeshift Drivers seat and held the shifter down with both hands so I could move the car lol:

While you have all that apart, you can seal your moonroof glass better. With it closed all the way loosen the hex indent bolts (one is showing in one of your pics) one side at a time, push up on the glass and re-tighten.

Thanks, I will do that!

Wish i could help bro, but i have no experience with this issue as of yet.

yea i had a sunroof drain come lose and pour it out right above the rearseat in my aurora. it

had that on my old GP, the drain hoses aren't held on well in the first place and then the get brittle and dry rot.

On taking the rear seatback off, on my 89 you have to unbolt the seatbelts that have a bracket attached and then push upward to pop it out of the top left and right uclamp type thingy'*.

OK sunroof drains are blown out so that should fix it, however I went further and and the area that the water was dripping from the sunroof track at the rear was a slit in the metal where it ran through, I caulked that shut so that the water is now forced to go down the tube, even if it is comming in too fast.

Will be doing a leak test later today.

For the door seals, I placed a bead of silicone along the weather striping in the groove that the water seemed to be running down, when the door closes it pushes the the bead up and should seal it up nicely. Again will be doing a leak test later today to find out.

Trunk Leak I sealed the area where I believe water was going in with silicone. Will do leak test later today.

As for the backseat, incase anyone wants to know in the future. After you get the bolts out on the floor where the seatbelts are, all that is holding it is 4 clips at the top. the only way to get them out is to use a flathead screwdriver from the top and push the tabs down which releases them..do them one at a time and the seat pops off. Now that i know how it is attached it is beyond easy to remove. I will post pictures later today showing the tabs.


I also have the headliner out and stripped so it is ready for the new fabric once it arrives, as I ordered it today.

I will update with pictures of everything and on whether they worked.

Stay tuned..

Ok guys final update and lots of pictures, hopefully this info will be of help to anyone who has leaks in the future.

The car is now water tight and put back together, except for the headliner, as I am waiting for my material to arrive.

Sunroof Drain leaks:

There are 4 drains for the sunroof, one in each corner.

The rear ones the water runs down the sunroof track inside the car, all the way to the back, where the outlets are and the tubes then run down along the rear window and exit behind the rear wheel.

These were plugged so I blew them out with an air compressor. Also, when they were plugged the water would build up enough to run through a slit in the metal track on each corner, which then would cause the water to run on the headliner, down the trim and out under the rear seat. To make sure water is always forced down the tubes if for some reason it was comming in too fast, I sealed these slits up with silicone:



Next you have the front drains. The problematic one is the Drivers side. It runs from the sunroof down along the windshield, behind the dash/firewall and out behind the front wheel.



When running water on the car, I was getting water running right from the corner under the dash where the parking brake is where you can see the cardboard like piece on the floor:



The problem with this sunroof drain is a poor design on GM'* part. The white tube that runs down from the sunroof connects to a black tube further down. There is no clamp on this tube so it simply slips out and all the water then runs into the car.

The connection for this tube if you look at the picture above, is along the side of the car about 5 inches above the top of the parking brake arm. The only way to get at it is pull out the dash, or thanks to the internet, I was able to find another way to get at it by removing the parking brake assembly so you can get at the rubber barrier above it and cut a hole.

When I did that I found this:



I re-attached the hoses and used 2 zip ties to keep them together. They won't be coming loose ever again.

Now that I had my sunroof leaks fixed I needed to turn to the door seal leaks. The rubber seal on the car which the door presses up against when closed, was somehow getting water on the inside of it and then draining into the car.

You can see the water pooled up here where it runs in:



And from the inside it looks like this (This is a picture of the passenger door):



I needed to find out how this water was getting here so I pulled the door panels off and ran a hose over the car once again.

If you look at this picture you can see the rain barrier on the door, which when the water runs in the door it is supposed to then run out of the holes just above the bottom of the rain barrier, however as you can see the seal/caulking on the rain barrier is not tight, so the water then runs out the bottom..resulting in it pooling up on the weather seal and then into the car.



So I got out my silicone again and permanently sealed up the bottom and a few inches up along the sides (if I should need to replace a window regulator I can simply peel it off and then would have to re silicone it again when I am finished)





Passenger door:



After doing this I did another leak test and low and behold you could watch the water run inside the door and then out the holes..after opening the doors the seals were bone dry, like they are supposed to be.

I then checked the back doors, which were not leaking into the car, but the seals were still a little wet, so I pulled those panels off and re sealed them up as well. Did another leak test and now the door seals are completely dry.

The trunk leak I looked into and a simple thing that caught my eye was the plastic molding that runs along the bottom, which has an opening where water can run down in, so I put silicone on those to seal them up as well and that seemed to solve my trunk leak problem:





So now the car is water tight and I can start putting it back together.

Before I did that though, I wanted to protect myself one step further from having to rip everything out again if for whatever reason some water would work its way into the car again. I decided to seal up the foam on the underside of the carpet so that if water would get on the floorboards it would not easily soak into the foam, as it took me 3 days of fans, sitting in the hot sun, and squishing, to get the foam dry and water free..something I don't want to have to do again.

So I glued plastic to the bottom to prevent it from soaking water.. I also drilled a small hole in the corner of each rear floorboard where the water liked to pool up and painted the drill holes to keep from any rust forming (even here in Florida). This should make sure any water that gets in won't pool up and will drip out the bottomI didn't remember to get pictures of the drill holes though. It may work, it may not, but I feel better that I took this extra step. :




While I had everything out, the headliner was loose in a few places so I decided it would be a good time to replace that. Here you can see I have the fabric removed and am half done removing the old foam backing of the fabric from the headliner board:



I finished that up and it is ready for the new material, once it arrives I will finish it up and then that will be the last thing to be put into the car..for now the car functions just fine without it.

And here is how it looked without anything in the car other than the dash itself:
















And for anyone who wants to know how to remove the backrest, after removing the bolts on the bottom, there are 4 clips that hold it in near the top:





Simply pull the seat out enough from the top so you can see the clips from above and use a flat head screwdriver and push the tops of the clips down to compress them so that you can pop them out.


I hope this will be of some help to the next guy who has water coming into his car. Also I hope it can help prevent issues for some people, go run water on your cars..if your door seals are wet, then water is getting into your car, even if you don't see it...so you need to fix the seals on the rain barrier inside the door. Your carpet might not be wet, but I guarantee the foam on the underside of your carpet is..so do yourself a favor and fix the problem before it becomes a mold infested, horribly smelly issue

Great work! Sorry I didn't see your thread earlier, I've had my 03 stripped down the same way and had the same trouble with my back seat (cept I wasn't as patient and found out the hard way those clips cost $30 a piece!).

Glad you figured it out. Appreciate all the pictures and the write up.