Passat water leaks

One thing to try is climb inside the rear cargo area and have someone spray water on the seal. Start spraying from the bottom up so you can detect where the water starts coming in (if you spray from top down, the leak can be anywhere). Touch plain white paper along the inside of the door seal. If there is a leak, the paper will show dampness immediately.

Are there rubber bumpers on the bottom edge of the rear hatch-door? If so try screwing the bumpers in so the door seals tighter against the rubber seal.

Just some ideas looking at pictures of the car, I'm not familiar with the Passat variant.

Thanks for your response. It's not the seal of the hatch-door that's leaking. Like I said, in other words, inside the cargo area, on the left and right side there are two small "stow-away" cabinets each with a plastic-door. The leak is between the plastic-door(inside cargo area) and the body-panel (on the outside of the car) or if you like the rear wing.

I thought of it but did'nt get around spraying water over suspect-spots. On forehand before spraying I thought let's ask, maybe somebody knows. But it's a good idea to start from the bottom up. Thanks for the idea!

Rgds, Gio

Missed the beginning of the thread, but I recently got a notice from VW that checking the drains for the sunroof, etc, should be done periodically so they don't back up and overflow inside the car.

That was true even on my old '95 Jetta, so I'd think it might also be true on your Passat, depending on where the leak is coming from...

Mark '08 Jetta SEL

No sunroof on mine, but that's compensated by a pool in the back :-)

Rgds, Gio

Don't know, so I'm asking.

Are there drains back there? Is the drainage path clear? Around here we have trees that drop lots of junk that really makes a mess where water is supposed to run unless you reach in an clear it, then blast it with a hose . If water is getting trapped somewhere like that, could be causing problems.

Just an idea. Not necessarily a good one ;)

Mark

Thanks for your ongoing effort concerning this matter. But it's definatly not a blocked drain. It probably is a worn/leaky seal somewhere near/from the rear side-windows.

But a leak in the roof where the seals are for the roof-rails is possible too. As said in the 1e post, mine does'nt have the roof rails. But it does have a kind of seals running along the lenght of the roof where on other models the roof rails are mounted (see picture link in 1e post).

Anyway, did'nt get around spraying the vehicle with water and try to locate the leak but plan to do that shortly.

Rgds, Gio