saablog

I had expected to be writing a blog entry this week about the last race of the season, about how the race went and how the season went, and about the planned upgrades to the 900. That will have to wait.

Yesterday I took off the Falken Azenis race tires and put back on the 5-spoke wheels with thick-treaded tires. While I had the right-front wheel off, I attempted to tighten the power steering hose clamps to stop the PS fluid leak. After that I drove to the gas station and Home Depot, then parked the 900 in its customary place on the grass next to our driveway. I’ve gotten in the habit of parking nose-down because I was able to clear the front sunroof drains, but not the rear drains. This ensured I didn’t have any sunroof leaks.

Last night it rained heavily. As I was leaving for Portland this morning, I decided to pull the 900 in to the garage so I could see whether the power steering fluid was leaking; there will be a puddle on the floor when I get home if I haven’t fixed the problem. In any case, when I opened the door of the car, I encountered this wet mess:

  click any photo to make it larger.

You can see that the front left corner of the sunroof opening has water dripping from its edge. It was dripping right on to the driver’s seat. From there, it flowed frontward to the driver’s footwell, and rearward to the left-rear passenger footwell. It also splashed, wetting the pedals, knee bolster, and console housing the ignition key and light and window switches. You can see the headliner is wet both on the sunroof and the ceiling, it is saturated where the driver’s visor was pressed up against it. Yuck!

There was between one and two inches of rain standing in the driver’s footwell. I ran inside, got a towel, and dried off the seat, then the console, and started the car. The whole time, water was dripping onto my left leg from the sunroof opening. The car fortunately did start and run properly. I backed it in to the garage, and opened the sunroof and windows. Then I started fretting.

 Water, water everywhere.

I was suposed to be leaving for Portland. Right now. Instead, I decided I needed to take care of this problem. I removed the trim pieces that hold the carpet in place at the dor opening, and lifted. Water was pooled in the front footwell, soaked up by a PVC-backed foam-rubber pad. I knew that to dry this properly, I needed to lift the carpet up. It is held in by the front seat, so I dug out my tools and pulled out the driver seat. Then I lifted the front and rear carpets and determiend that the pads could come out if the rear-seat heat ducts were removed… and the center console was removed. Since I’d had the console out in January, I knew that 6 screws and one bolt were all I needed. So I got to work.

After I got in there, I was able to actually remove the carpet pad without removing the carpet. Good thing, as the front carpet is one piece that goes all the way under the console and is attached under the passenger side seat as well. Ditto the rear carpet, which requires rear seat removal as well for removal. Crazy. I guess they didn’t want to take a chance on the carpet bunching up or something. I pulled out the pads and set them outside of the car to dry.

Those pads are actually pretty clever. If you spilled a drink, for example, on the carpet, the PVC backing would prevent the drink from soaking into the pad, it would only be in the carpet. However, in the case of the roof leaking and those pads becoming saturated, it would take approximately an entire summer for the pads to dry. So I’m glad I was able to remove them. When I did, I saw the telltale black stains of mildew past, as though this has happened before.

With all of that removal done, I toweled out the footwells and tried to soak up the water from the carpets. It was far from a perfect job. Then I put some plastic objects (broom handle, funnel) under the carpets to let air circulate around them. And that’s how it sits.

Hopefully it will all be able to dry by the time I get home on Thursday, or at least by the weekend. Then I get to unclog the sunroof drain again. I’ll bet that it is full of pine needles and dirt, the same kind of stuff that blows into the car from the sunroof track whenever I opened the roof in the summer. After that, the car will be parked with its car cover in place.

If the carpets dry without mildewing, then they’ll recover OK. My worry is that the headliner and sunroof liner will be permanently stained and will sag more than they have. I’d like to get around recovering the headliner if I can. I’ll have to see what it looks like when it dries.