Sunroof Drain Leak

Just bought a 96 legacy ls. First subaru. Love it so far.

 

Found out my drivers side sunroof drain is leaking. Just curious if this is a common thing among these cars and if theres an easy fix for it?

 

Thanks in advance!

Yes it is common to see. The fix it to reconnect the hose lol. Most people put a hose clamp or zip ties to make sure it stays.

 

The repair is a pita because you have to pull the headliner, but once you do that it is simple. You will see a hose on all 4 corners. Put a hose clamp on each and put it back together.

Yeah I fixed mine with a zip tie lol. Blow all the crap out of the hose then connect it and zip tie it. I haven't had any problems since then.

I just went through the same thing as you six weeks ago. My build thread documents the sunroof drain fix: http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/just-purchased-98-lgt-wagon-coolant-positive-hydrocarbons-151027.html Good luck!

first you need to look and see if the drain holes in the front corners are plugged up. i park mine under a tree most of the year and it collects tree crap in the drain holes. i have to clear them every few months.

 

this is REALLY common and recurring.

 

the other also happens. but my 97 with 165k miles has not done that yet. just the crap in the drain hole.

 

FYI: all sunroofs leak, it is a big hole in the roof. but there is a system designed to collect the water and drain it away from the interior. tubes run down the door columns, 2 front and 2 rear, i think, and out the bottom of the car.

Johnegg is absolutely correct. The sunroof drains could be clogged just as easily as they are disconnected. It was a pain to get to bottom of the drain tubes on my LGT because the front tires needs to be removed, and then the inner wheelwell liner needs to be unfastened to gain access to the bottom of the tube. In my case, the Subaru lines were clear, but I've had a Scirocco sunroof in the past that clogged and leaked.

my experience with the clogged drains is that the clog is visable from above with the glass open. and that the drain holes are smaller than the tubes. so what ever makes it past the drain tray up top usually flows on out.

 

if the drain holes are clear, then it may well be the tube disconnected from the drain tray as mentioned above.

That makes sense.

Lame. Felt a couple drips on my head yesterday as well...

Well. If you wanna try to "snake-out" the drains which are connected to the tray, then you can use a length of stiff speaker wire. I did this because I had a passenger side wet floor, which turned out to be a spectre of a leak. However, clearing the wiper cowl drains and then servicing the other drains should yield success. If not, then window seals and door seals could be suspect.

Dropped the front of the headliner. Turned out the drains were disconnected from the tubes. fixed it. hopefully all better!

This is random. But MHS reminds me of Marshall high school. lol

...If not, then window seals and door seals could be suspect.

 

Another suspect is the gasket between the sunroof and the drain pan. Unfortunately, you cannot assess this with the sunroof in the car, but have to remove and detach the sunroof from the pan. There's a lot of posts that suggest this gasket disintegrates over time, such as what happened to our 1991 Legacy - it was toast! We pulled the sunroof and re-siliconed the gasket and it now doesn't leak at all!

 

I posted our entire fix on my blog, here: http://caverpilot.com/cars/how-to-remove-replace-sunroof-in-1991-subaru-legacy-and-stop-leaking-roof-or-headliner/

 

Here's how bad the gasket was:

http://caverpilot.com/wp-content/gallery/cars/img_0174.jpg