Testing Sunroof Drains and Windscreen Seal

[Boggie]

Hi All,
Is there a way to test if the sunroof drains are OK, please? E.G by pouring water down each one and seeing it come out somewhere? Where should I look? I want to check they are clear and working as they should.

This next thing might not be directly connected, but is a worry anyway, and made me think about the sunfoof drains. Where the windscreen rubber meets the inside of the windscreen, I found water. That is to say, near the bottom of the winscreen, by the offside A pillar, when I separated the seal where it is pressed against the glass itself (not the body) there was some water trapped. It may be that this is coming from the outside, finding its way between the glass and 40 year old seal, then ending up trapped in there, only for me to accidentally find it when I was routing a cable down the offside A pillar and disturbed the seal. Any thoughts, please?

[Boggie]

OK. I got some time to test the drains, and got some unusual behaviour.

The car is currently high at the front (sitting on hydraulic ramps, about 2 feet up). I got a small funnel with 10mm hose attached,inserted it into the front right sunroof drain hole, and pured in a small cup of water. This came out of a drain hole at the front of the OS sill, but I can see no pipe there, it just "loosly" came out of the hole. I then tried the same thing with the left hand front drain hole. No water came out of the front of the NS sill, but it did eventualy come out of the rear. Surely these dains don't simply dump rain and road spray into the sills...

Are these the only drain holes? I was assuming there are also holes at the rear, but I can't see under the opened sunroof lid to check. I poured some water down both sides, but nothing came out under the car. Can anyone advise, please?

Thanks, Ian

[Ralph in Socal]

Long read but Song addressed his sunroof drains in this thread.

viewtopic.php?t=25858

Search and you will find more on the topic

Ralph

[86_6series]

For the front drains, the hose exits at edge of the sills.
Chances are that the end of the hose is somewhat above
the sill. There is a hole at the bottom of the sill, look
straight up with a light and you should see the hose.
Many have lengthened the hose to exit past the sill edge.
The hose can be seen and worked on behind the speaker
in the kickplate.

Try to blow compressed air on the clogged side. If that doesn't
work, you can try a snake to unclog.

For the rears, insert a tube into the hole you can't reach
and use a nozzle to blow air through the hose. The exit
for water in the rear are the cutouts past the quarter windows.

For more info, do a search on clogged drains on this site and
https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/foru ... 4-E63-E64)

Good luck
Bob V

[Boggie]

Long read but Song addressed his sunroof drains in this thread.

viewtopic.php?t=25858

Search and you will find more on the topic

Ralph

Thanks Ralph. You weren't kidding either! The info was on page 44 of 48! Interesting thread though.

For those serching for the information, these are also useful pages:
viewtopic.php?t=18139
viewtopic.php?t=25858&start=1075

[Boggie]

For the front drains, the hose exits at edge of the sills.
Chances are that the end of the hose is somewhat above
the sill. There is a hole at the bottom of the sill, look
straight up with a light and you should see the hose.
Many have lengthened the hose to exit past the sill edge.
The hose can be seen and worked on behind the speaker
in the kickplate.

Try to blow compressed air on the clogged side. If that doesn't
work, you can try a snake to unclog.

For the rears, insert a tube into the hole you can't reach
and use a nozzle to blow air through the hose. The exit
for water in the rear are the cutouts past the quarter windows.

For more info, do a search on clogged drains on this site and
https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/foru ... 4-E63-E64)

Good luck
Bob V

Thanks Bob.
I finally found some time to investigate the front drains today. Having identified where the pipes should be, I had a look with my torch. Neither front drain tubes are visible, either through the lower sill holes OR the inner wing holes. I guess the next step is to go from the top down. I.E. remove the speakers and kick panels inside the car, then the front wheels and the splash guards at the back of the wheel arches, to run a new length of pipe (assuming there are pipes behind the speakers I can attach the new pipe to, of course.

Is there a proceedure / trick to navigating a new pipe down through the inner wing and sill? It looks like a challenge trying to achieve this e.g. with a bent wire through the speaker hole....