Bob
I spoke too soon.After a night of rain i have found more water in the battery compartment, aggghhh!!!!!!
My mechanic is going to have a look on Tues this week.He thinks it is a leaking seal somewhere.
I can't understand i used a hosepipe on the car today and could see no traces of water coming into the battery comp.I used the hsepipe on the rear passenger tailgate window and also the rear passenger side light unit.

Any ideas ????

 

tourer23, yeah I've got a couple of suggestions:

1) you don't have a sunroof so it would seem like it may be the taillights but I'm just guessing
2) you need to do a modified WETS like me, tape towel strips at the 12, 3, 6, and 9:00 positions to really verify the direction the water is coming in at. In fact, the more strips in as many locations leading to the battery, the better to locate an oddball source. Since it's still raining there, you've got a great opportunity to get good data
3) was the car parked or driven in the rain?
4) does the sparetire well have any water?
5) is it wet on the left side of the wheel well?

 

Tourer23, check if you have the drains, despite not having the sunroof.
The drains might be used for something else, who knows.
Also when I had a leak from the drains, when opening the side compartment in the trunk, i could feel that the tail light cables were wet from the dropping water from the drains above. If your cables are wet after rain, you are one step closer to the problem.

 

Rainy day update: It's raining here and a good time to check for leakage. Checked my WETS and all is dry. No leaks and nothing to report. Added another towel strip by the right taillight. It's going to rain heavily through the weekend, so I've got more test days coming up. Ironic, now I want it to leak.

 

Bump! Any news on your water leaks testing?

Hi guys, new owner of a 2009 535 xiT here, got it last week.
I do not read in German, but very curious to find out how to fix/diagnose sunroof or any other drainage issues,
so I'd appreciate a reference in English.


I had to remove a rear bumper cover and make some adjustments to it and the lights due to previous minor work on the car ( looks like the bumper cover was replaced and not installed properly on its plastic carrier).
I did not notice any evidence of leaks, checked the seals on both tail lights, side vents (what are they needed for anyway?) and what looks like hose-sunroof-drains visually, adjusted closing clearance on the tailgate to make a tight seal with closed tailgate (it was barely touching weather stripping along bumper cover before this). ***** <- this maybe just another reason for leaks after carwash!
The quick way to test if there is a gap between the weather stripping and a tailgate is to direct a bright light at the rear of the car and look at the gate from inside the dark car - if you see the light then there is a crack

All looks good now for me, but this thread is bugging me so I have to test my trunk for leaks!

Also, could not find any DiY or tips on rear air suspension compressor hose repair
I checked mine and the hose looks like a thread braided rubber, decent quality and long piece, making a loop just before entering a compressor, and then going somewhere up and above from there, possibly inside the trunk area? Maybe bmw replaced faulty hose with a better one on LCI cars and rerouted the intake?
Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks!

 

Vash, how do you adjust the tailgate closing clearance?

 

You would need to remove three plastic screw covers around a latch mechanism on the lower trunk plastic garnish just above the rear bumper: two on either side and one to the front of the latch.
This will expose 3 hex screws which fix the latch to the body. Undo the screws a few turns and you can move the latch sideways and up and down about 1.5cm.

I also noticed that although rarely the latch bar (electric in my case) gets into a wrong position, e.g. with the tailgate open it would shift into a closed (down) position and visa versa. I guess this happens when the car sits in powersafe mode and then I try to close the gate manually or some scenario like that.
Check yours to make sure it is in sync with tailgate before you make any adjustments

 

We had a pretty wet spring. My car was left out in a couple of large rain storms and even parked in a forward upward incline position. My WETS strips were and are completely dry so I had no leaks whatsoever. So I can't add anything here. It's summer now, so I'm only going to have car washing incidents but I'll keep monitoring my strips. Seems one of us is going to eventually be able to report in with some data as to source of leak.

 

Thanks, so if one can see light coming thru (sounds like a two person project BTW? - one shines the light, the other watches from inside), which direction do you adjust the latch? Vertically up? (Six movements potentially: Up/Down/Forward/Reverse/Left/Right)

 

You move the latch down.
I did it alone in my garage with a portable light (200watt) situated behind the car