Hey guys,
Long(ish) time lurker, first time poster. I have a Y2K 4 door 4WD sunroof manual 4.1 RAV4. I bought it about a year and a half ago and have been digging through the site here (and others) for various issues. One persistent problem has been the wet floor. Yes, I have gone through all the posts here on the problem, and I found some erroneous info in some of them, so I'm starting a new thread on it.
I bought my RAV at a little lot in OKC. It jumped out of 5th gear ("Oh, I'm shocked it does that. I had no idea..." said the lot owner.) I knew it was not that big of a job to fix. Anyway, fixed that with a couple new gears.
The carpet was getting wet. Cause? Hard to say. I had a new windshield put in. Still getting wet. Checked the AC drain line. No problem. Ran trimmer string line down the sun roof drains. Ran the water hose over everything, no leaks apparent. The drain hole at the floor under the carpet was pushed up. Sealed that. HINT: the car dealer probably pushed it up to drain the cabin. Anyway, I thought I had it all worked out. Took it to work in a rain storm, parked it, came back and there was a gallon of water in the driver's floor area. I bailed out the water. OK, now it's serious.
Teh Intr4w3bz, y0, said that a lot of people found that the sunroof drain hose ended too high up. They either added a bit on to it or pushed it so it drained differently. So I dug into it. Take the driver's side plastic sill off (pops off with a screwdriver), pull the left kick panel off. The fuse/relay panel and a plastic junction connector holder box is there. Behind that, inside the body panels, you will see a white plastic hose that ends a couple inches up above the bottom of the metal sill, that looks like 1/4" OD water line as one would use for, say, an ice maker connection. Yup, just like people described. However, this is NOT the sunroof drain. That is the antenna drain. Yeah, the antenna has it's own drain, and that's it. I know this because I blew air through it and listened for where it was coming out, and it wasn't the sun roof drain. It was the antenna. The sunroof drain is a clear plastic (not milk colored like the antenna drain) line that runs kind of behind the antenna drain, up along the corner inside there. I ran orange trimmer line down the sun roof and I could see the orange line inside this hose. The hose is about 3/8" ID or so, 1/2" OD, the size of your finger. This hose runs down the A piller back in the corner of the area behind the fuse box and ends in a metal box that appears to be part of the metal sill, just above the bottom of the side sill. Now, here is where it gets weird. The water runs down the hose, into this area inside the sill, where there is a hole, maybe 3/4" diameter in the sill that shunts the water to the inside of the frame rail! From there, it just leaks out wherever. Note that the water does not exit the side sill to the outside, does not exit to the area behind the front wheel under the fender liner, it goes to the inside of the frame rail, which isn't really a separate part, but a channel part of the unibody construction running the length of the car on both sides. If you hook an air hose to the sunroof drain, you can hear it come out from the sill.
So why was it filling up the floor with a gallon of water? My THEORY is that the water was coming down the sun roof drain, filling up the side sill, trying to drain into the frame rail but because of the angle the car was parked at, slightly down at the left front, the water did not have an exit point from this disaster and managed to seep into the cabin through the body seams. I think that's why it only intermittently leaks into the cabin. You have to be parked at just the wrong angle for it to happen.
What I did: Take the fender liner off or loose. Behind the liner and basically directly behind the front wheel, a rectangular box metal is bolted to the footwell. I can think of no purpose for this box, besides perhaps adding some structural crush zone to the area. It is like 1/8" thick steel and, I dunno, maybe 3x6x2", attached with 2 bolts. Taking that off, you can see a 3/4" or 1" plastic plug running into the area where the sunroof drain terminates. Pull that plug out and you can see the end of the hose and the hole going into the frame rail.
From inside the car, I pulled out the white plastic connector holder block, busting the tabs because I couldn't figure out how else to get it out of there, and I'm usually pretty careful about that stuff, but pulling the box out of the way to get some room to work. The fuse/relay block is held on with one bolt and you can loosen that to get a little more room. Next I pulled the clear hose up so I had the end inside the cabin and cut a couple inches off the end of it. I then inserted a piece of copper pipe of about the right size into that and added a piece of rubber hose to the other end and pointed the rubber hose out the hole that I found under/behind that metal box behind the fender liner. I added a bunch of silicone to the hole/hose to seal it up, put the metal box back on (hey, why not? It came with the car) and put it all back together. I'm not too concerned with water ingress from the antenna, so I left that alone. I don't see a gallon of water coming in that way. Maybe I'm wrong there, we'll see. Anyway, now when I blow air through the sunroof drain, it comes out behind the fender well, outside the cabin, outside the frame rail, outside the sill.
To dry out the cabin, I pulled up the carpet, vacuumed out as much water as I could with my shop vac from the floorboard, carpet and carpet jute (padding), and put a box fan on the whole mess for a couple days, pointed at the bottom of the jute.
Sorry, no pics. Oh, I have an electronic parts catalog, and that metal box behind the fender well is not shown or listed in it! It's just there.
I appreciate the site here and just thought I would add my experiences.
Dr.Hess
Long(ish) time lurker, first time poster. I have a Y2K 4 door 4WD sunroof manual 4.1 RAV4. I bought it about a year and a half ago and have been digging through the site here (and others) for various issues. One persistent problem has been the wet floor. Yes, I have gone through all the posts here on the problem, and I found some erroneous info in some of them, so I'm starting a new thread on it.
I bought my RAV at a little lot in OKC. It jumped out of 5th gear ("Oh, I'm shocked it does that. I had no idea..." said the lot owner.) I knew it was not that big of a job to fix. Anyway, fixed that with a couple new gears.
The carpet was getting wet. Cause? Hard to say. I had a new windshield put in. Still getting wet. Checked the AC drain line. No problem. Ran trimmer string line down the sun roof drains. Ran the water hose over everything, no leaks apparent. The drain hole at the floor under the carpet was pushed up. Sealed that. HINT: the car dealer probably pushed it up to drain the cabin. Anyway, I thought I had it all worked out. Took it to work in a rain storm, parked it, came back and there was a gallon of water in the driver's floor area. I bailed out the water. OK, now it's serious.
Teh Intr4w3bz, y0, said that a lot of people found that the sunroof drain hose ended too high up. They either added a bit on to it or pushed it so it drained differently. So I dug into it. Take the driver's side plastic sill off (pops off with a screwdriver), pull the left kick panel off. The fuse/relay panel and a plastic junction connector holder box is there. Behind that, inside the body panels, you will see a white plastic hose that ends a couple inches up above the bottom of the metal sill, that looks like 1/4" OD water line as one would use for, say, an ice maker connection. Yup, just like people described. However, this is NOT the sunroof drain. That is the antenna drain. Yeah, the antenna has it's own drain, and that's it. I know this because I blew air through it and listened for where it was coming out, and it wasn't the sun roof drain. It was the antenna. The sunroof drain is a clear plastic (not milk colored like the antenna drain) line that runs kind of behind the antenna drain, up along the corner inside there. I ran orange trimmer line down the sun roof and I could see the orange line inside this hose. The hose is about 3/8" ID or so, 1/2" OD, the size of your finger. This hose runs down the A piller back in the corner of the area behind the fuse box and ends in a metal box that appears to be part of the metal sill, just above the bottom of the side sill. Now, here is where it gets weird. The water runs down the hose, into this area inside the sill, where there is a hole, maybe 3/4" diameter in the sill that shunts the water to the inside of the frame rail! From there, it just leaks out wherever. Note that the water does not exit the side sill to the outside, does not exit to the area behind the front wheel under the fender liner, it goes to the inside of the frame rail, which isn't really a separate part, but a channel part of the unibody construction running the length of the car on both sides. If you hook an air hose to the sunroof drain, you can hear it come out from the sill.
So why was it filling up the floor with a gallon of water? My THEORY is that the water was coming down the sun roof drain, filling up the side sill, trying to drain into the frame rail but because of the angle the car was parked at, slightly down at the left front, the water did not have an exit point from this disaster and managed to seep into the cabin through the body seams. I think that's why it only intermittently leaks into the cabin. You have to be parked at just the wrong angle for it to happen.
What I did: Take the fender liner off or loose. Behind the liner and basically directly behind the front wheel, a rectangular box metal is bolted to the footwell. I can think of no purpose for this box, besides perhaps adding some structural crush zone to the area. It is like 1/8" thick steel and, I dunno, maybe 3x6x2", attached with 2 bolts. Taking that off, you can see a 3/4" or 1" plastic plug running into the area where the sunroof drain terminates. Pull that plug out and you can see the end of the hose and the hole going into the frame rail.
From inside the car, I pulled out the white plastic connector holder block, busting the tabs because I couldn't figure out how else to get it out of there, and I'm usually pretty careful about that stuff, but pulling the box out of the way to get some room to work. The fuse/relay block is held on with one bolt and you can loosen that to get a little more room. Next I pulled the clear hose up so I had the end inside the cabin and cut a couple inches off the end of it. I then inserted a piece of copper pipe of about the right size into that and added a piece of rubber hose to the other end and pointed the rubber hose out the hole that I found under/behind that metal box behind the fender liner. I added a bunch of silicone to the hole/hose to seal it up, put the metal box back on (hey, why not? It came with the car) and put it all back together. I'm not too concerned with water ingress from the antenna, so I left that alone. I don't see a gallon of water coming in that way. Maybe I'm wrong there, we'll see. Anyway, now when I blow air through the sunroof drain, it comes out behind the fender well, outside the cabin, outside the frame rail, outside the sill.
To dry out the cabin, I pulled up the carpet, vacuumed out as much water as I could with my shop vac from the floorboard, carpet and carpet jute (padding), and put a box fan on the whole mess for a couple days, pointed at the bottom of the jute.
Sorry, no pics. Oh, I have an electronic parts catalog, and that metal box behind the fender well is not shown or listed in it! It's just there.
I appreciate the site here and just thought I would add my experiences.
Dr.Hess
