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Sunday 2 April 2017

Second Discovery Leak

I have found the second water leak in Junior. The first being the sun roof drain, as detailed in my previous post.

It took a while because I don't think I believed it at first.


It is capillary action through a spot weld joint, top left of the windscreen!


You can see my first attempt at a fix in the pictures. Some windscreen sealant along the seam. The water is still coming in.

I have checked, double and triple checked. There is absolutely no water on the inside of the roof. The only water is that drip on that weld. The rest of the lip round the windscreen is dry.


I tried to stop it with some windscreen sealant on the outside but that just made it worse. I must have inadvertently directed the water in to the very joint I was trying to seal.


When removing the sealant I revealed a crack. Clearly visible in the above photo.


It needed a neater more directed approach. I dug out some Milliput from my shed. This is a two part epoxy paste. I use this for modelling but it has some very useful properties.

It will dry when wet and is water proof. It has a fine finish. When cured it feels hard but it does have the tiniest bit of flex so might survive on a car. It also sticks to nearly anything.


Before it starts to cure, it has the consistency of Blu Tack or Plasticine. While it is still in that workable state, Milliput can be smoothed with water.


I was able to push it in to the cracks and create a smooth funnel to direct the water down the gully at the side of the windscreen.



The Milliput had dried enough in less than an hour for me to be able to retest. So far no water getting in. It's definitely improved but I'm not prepared to say fully fixed until we have had some driving rain to give it a thorough soaking.



As any fix for this problem can only be done from the outside, I could put the headlining and trim back in.


The job is just the reverse of taking it out with the added difficulty of holding it up while you get the first couple of screws in.


One thing I did notice is that two of the screws holding the upper console on are different. When I took it off I had assumed they were replacements but it is more likely that it is because they go in to speed (Spire) clips instead of plastic plugs used for the others. One screw either side of the middle.


The headlining slightly overlaps the very place the drip was coming in. That explains why the water appeared to come from different places. It was soaking the headlining and depending on the tilt of the vehicles the drip could come from nearly anywhere.


As mentioning in my removal instructions. The seat belt holes at the back are now trimmed inside with carpet.


I've yet to make a cover for the holes where the 3rd row headrests used to be.



I did make a cover for the boot to avoid the contents being visible from the outside.




The whole installation job was much quicker than taking it out.

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Update
After having attempted my own fix for the water leak, I came across some official Land Rover instructions:
D2 Water Ingress to Headliner No: 76/04/04/NAS Dated: 30 April 2004


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