Yesterday I spent some time cleaning up my OE windshield-cowl seal with hopes of being able to reuse it. I removed the RTV from my previous repair attempt this summer and cleaned up all the built up grime.
It was a painful process of carefully cutting with a hobby knife and sanding with a
3M bristle disc. In the end it came out looking pretty good.
Today I braved the rain and setup my QuickShade over the TJ and set out to get the OE seal back on. My plan this time was to use a generous amount of RTV on the bottom corners and along the top of the seal in hopes to stop any leaks. Previously I had only done RTV on the top. I never see a practical reason for me to want to fold the windshield.
To add to my disappointment and anger about the Omix-Ada seal I was greeted with this mess when I opened the door today:
Yup, I can only assume that Omix-Ada seal didn't even solve the problem, on top of all the other issues I ran into. In the picture I circled where the water is dripping from.
I would like to mention when I got the seal removed I wasn't able to definitively tell where it leaked in from, but because of the location of the drip I can only assume it to be from the seal.
To begin, I decided to remove all the cowl screws and get the windshield folded down. I would've removed the cowl cover but due to my issues in the last post it was thoroughly wedged in there; I had to remove the seal first. Once the windshield was folded down it was pretty easy to work the seal out from behind the cowl cover, and then I was able to remove the cowl cover like normal.
Interestingly enough there wasn't any water in the HVAC intake like last time. This will require further investigation; it is causing me another leak on the passenger side.
The windshield-cowl seal has some foam added on the top side of the corners. The foam on my OE seal wasn't salvageable but I had some 3M foam tube left over from an
Omix-Ada Hardtop Seal kit, it seemed like it would work well.
It gets affixed to the seal like so (pic is of the evil Omix-Ada seal):
I also required 5 plastic push-pins to hold the seal in place. I've got a
kit of various sizes and the 3/16" pins worked well.
My plan for laying down the RTV was to put a bead around the edge of the tub where the cowl seal sits. I also put a bead on the bottom of the cowl seal for additional leak defense. Simulated RTV beads shown in red in the pics below:
Once the seal was attached and RTV'd I applied the foam strips to the corners and laid a generous bead of RTV across the entire top (including on top of the foam strips, they're not attached in the pic), again simulated below:
After that it was just folding and bolting the windshield back up. Putting the cowl cover back on and screwing it down is 100% easier with the OE seal
. No cursing and anger today!
Once all that was wrapped up I decided to do a bit of investigating as to why I was having so many problems with the cowl cover. I measured the thickness of the seal where the cowl cover presses against it and the Omix-Ada seal was almost 1/8" thicker!! OE specs my ass
.
Not only that, but the material is easily twice as tough as the OE rubber, it pretty much has no give. Not ideal considering the cowl cover needs to compress into it to screw down properly.
Circled below is the portion of the seal I'm referring to (pic was from a few days ago):
That's about it! I certainly hope this doesn't leak anymore; I'm not even sure what I'd do if it does
. We will see in time, the rain will be back soon!
Next leak related issue I want to figured out is how water is getting into my HVAC intake, but that'll be for another day..