MX-3.com

soooo i live in one of the rainiest places in north america Yes british columbia and ive noticed a little water in the back but lately it has been a hell of alot more i have replaced the weather stripping on the door and the window and still water appears. my friend said that there are drains for the sun roof on his gti and they were cracked and it drained into the same place but ive never seen these on our mx's i loooked and didnt seem to see anything like drain holes or anything

let me know if you have any ideas thnx

It is almost always the drains for the sunroof that leak into the interior of a MX-3. They are pretty well hidden and hard to get to. One for each corner of the sunroof and each runs down Inside the respective A or B pillar. So the front drains run Inside the A pillar, and the rears down the B pillar. The hoses are clipped into place so they can be hard to pull out. You also have to remove the pillar panels to get to them. After you've found them and pulled them out they are not hard to replace. Go to most any parts store with one of the OEM tubes and get some replacement rubber tubing, the cheap stuff works just fine as there are no chemicals or pressure on the tubes. If you cannot find the exact inside diameter then get something close, but slightly smaller. You can get the hose to stretch to a larger fitting if needed. Make sure to run the tube Out the bottom of the car. There are holes where the old tubes exited and may be hard to find, but if memory serves me the fronts exit out behind the mud guards and the rears behind the rear wheel well plastic.
Should take the better part of a day to get them out, replaced and put the interior back together, but in the end is well worth the effort. The water will ruin the carpet and padding and rust the inside of the car pretty quickly as most of the interior brackets are not rust proof coated.

thanks ill look for them today

For anybody else with this problem, im attempting it today and have found some useful info in the online manual.

Go to the mx-3.com home page and click 'online manual' on the left, then 'workshop manual' pages s-53 to s-56 have good diagrams of the sunroof assembly. Also look at pages S-63 to S-65 for interier trim removal

good luck with it

turbine wrote:For anybody else with this problem, im attempting it today and have found some useful info in the online manual.

Go to the mx-3.com home page and click 'online manual' on the left, then 'workshop manual' pages s-53 to s-56 have good diagrams of the sunroof assembly. Also look at pages S-63 to S-65 for interier trim removal

good luck with it

Good lookin' out.

My passenger side floor developed a puddle under the seat. At first i thought it was the sunroof drain pipes but their pretty robust, i actually doubt they would corrode through easily. If ur car has a puddle pull up the front passengers foot carpet under the dash first and see if theres a run of wetness under it. I found a wet trail running down under the carpet to under the passenger seat.

I had my windscreen replaced a few months ago and the bottom windscreen was not in the best condition when it was put back on so i ripped it out and replaced it with a scrap seal from ebay (emailed a guy scrapping an mx3). He sent me the plastic panel and bottom windscreen seal attached which i put on (£25 delivered 1st class). Fits real tight and i wreckon its solved the leak.

IMO pull up your carpet in your footwells to check the waters not running through here before checking your sunroof drain pipes as this takes a good few hours. Pulling up the carpet takes minutes.


enjoy!