I don't need proof of what you're complaining about. I need to know what you're complaining about. I went out and researched this since you refuse to explain what the problem is. There are a number of different things people are complaining about related to water, and numerous fixes, which suggests there is not a manufacturing defect or recurring problem. One person found salt stains inside after driving through deep water. A plastic plug was missing in the passenger floor area. Two people found water running in around the tail light housings but they couldn't tell if a seal was leaking or if it was due to the design. Another one was solved when the dealer replaced the rubber weatherstrip around the hatch opening. They did that under warranty. Multiple people were wondering if water was simply dripping from the hatch when it was opened.
If you are a master mechanic, you are the person best qualified to do the inspection before you bought the vehicle. The problem is, whether it's you, me, or someone you hire who does the inspection, what do you expect them to find? "Gee, the vehicle is in the nice warm shop where it's dry, so lets tear up the carpet and trim panels and spend a lot of our customer's time and money looking for one of the hundred different things no one should expect to find". You are already familiar with people accusing you of selling them more parts and services than they think they need. Now you're on the other end. You'd squeal like a little schoolgirl if the dealer tried to get more money out of you, yet you expect them to look for a problem they have no reason to suspect exists. We hear the same thing when something goes wrong with a car six months after we serviced it. "I had it in here six months ago; why didn't you warn me the transmission was going to fail"? "Why didn't you tell me the heater core was going to spring a leak"? Or my favorite; "you changed the oil two months ago. Are you sure you didn't do something to cause my radio to stop playing CDs yesterday"? Doctors tell us to eat right and exercise to avoid heart problems, but we don't listen. Mechanics tell us the car needs something to improve its reliability, and we accuse them of trying to sell us things we don't need. If we don't try to sell those parts and services, we are the bad guys because we didn't warn them about those looming problems. If you haven't figured it out already, mechanics are held to much higher standards than are doctors.
As a master mechanic myself at a new-car dealership, to fill in when times were slow, I also performed safety inspections and repairs on trade-in cars. A lot of those were from airport rental agencies with less than 15,000 miles. Some were wet inside from just being cleaned, all had straight water and dish soap in the windshield washer buckets that had to be thawed out, and all had regular maintenance. There was no manufacturer's warranty on any of those cars because the rental agencies bought them at real good prices because there was no warranty. When resold, any warranty on those was a gift from the dealer with no backing from the manufacturer. As such, each dealer was free to state what their in-house warranty would cover.
You also know there are different kinds of warranties. The original new-car warranty covers everything except "consumables", like brake pads and clutch discs. Some of those warranties do not transfer to a second owner, and some only transfer if you pay a fee. Original new-car warranties are meant to take care of manufacturing defects, things that fail sooner than they are expected to fail, and any other repairs that will improve customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
Extended warranties are not warranties at all. They are service contracts that spell out in great detail what they will pay for and what they will not pay for. The salespeople at my dealership made those available, but they didn't push them very hard. They had service contracts available through the manufacturer, but there was a deductible for each different problem, even if you had two or more repaired at the same time. Our local Chevy dealer, a well-known crook in our county, has a one-hour minimum labor charge in his shop. He tried to charge a customer 0.8 hours labor to replace a burned out head lamp bulb under warranty because GM would only reimburse him 0.2 hours, the least any manufacturer will pay for a warranty service. That's a case of the manufacturer taking care of their customer with the warranty repair, but the dealer is more interested in taking a few dollars now at the expense of a customer who will never buy from that dealer again.
A lot of dealers push aftermarket service contracts real aggressively because there is a lot of profit in those. 80 - 90 percent of the cost you paid goes back to the dealer and salesperson in the form of commissions. That leaves very little to actually go into the pot that pays for covered repairs. Almost all of these contracts specifically point out they do not cover electrical diagnosis unless you buy the top-of-the-line contract. They know how difficult it can be to find the causes of most of these problems, and they know the high cost of replacement computers and the high number of failures. When you buy one of these premier contracts, you're paying more for it than most repairs cost, whether you need one of those repairs or not. These contracts also include a deductible, usually $50.00 or $100.00. That's to prevent people from showing up for every little nuisance repair they can find.
You mentioned a 30-day warranty which is the most common one you'll find at a conscientious used-car dealership. Those are very limited because they are intended to ease your mind over some very expensive unexpected repair. They typically cover engine and transmission problems. They don't want you running back for all the little annoyances all used cars have, but it shows they are willing to stand behind what they think is a quality used car. Every 30-day warranty I've ever seen is a "50/50" warranty where you pay for half of the repair. After all, it is your car that broke down, not theirs. The expectation is the 50 percent that you pay for the repair is enough to pay for the parts and their mechanic's labor. The 50 percent they don't charge you is the profit they would have made if it was any other car's repair. You get help paying for the repair; they don't lose anything, but they don't make anything either. They're doing the repair for customer satisfaction. When you factor in the cost of diagnostic time, procuring the parts, the office staff that writes up the paperwork, and the high cost of complying with all the government regulations and taxes, the dealer loses every time they do a repair under their warranty. Also consider their mechanic who is working on your car is tied up and is not available to work on some other car. The dealer loses that income too.
The time or mileage has to be stipulated in the contract, otherwise how long is the dealer expected to be responsible for everything that goes wrong? I have a '93 Dodge Dynasty with less than 5,000 miles. It was covered 100 percent under warranty for 12,000 miles. Do you think they're going to repair it for free when it's 26 years old? Funny; come to think of it, a water leak is one of the things I fixed it for under warranty. As it turned out, I caused the problem by removing the water shield from inside a door, to spray rust-proofing in there, and I stuck it back on with a wrinkle that let rain water sneak through. Chrysler paid me for it anyway to fix that. The district representative even offered to pay for a new battery when the original one was eight years old. I thanked him, but refused, since there was no manufacturing defect with it. Your dealer gave you 30 days to come back and have a problem looked at. It's not his fault you waited too long. Also, by your own admission, it took you 2,000 km to find this problem. Dealers buy, inspect, repair, and sell those cars. They don't drive them, so there will be issues they can't be expected to be aware of. That's why they gave you some time to come back and tell them about a problem. Rather than holding them accountable for a problem, you should be cooperating with them to find a solution.
For one more comment of value that you might consider, the dealership owner I worked for gave us a lot of leeway with warranty issues. For new cars, he had a fund from Chrysler to take care of out-of-warranty problems on cars that were up to 50 percent over the original time or mileage limits, but that was reserved for good repeat customers who never caused a scene, because once that fund was used up, that was it for the rest of the year. The dealer decided who got those free repairs, and the manufacturer willingly paid those warranty claims.
Second, for used cars that were out of the dealer's 30-day warranty, we were allowed to at least diagnose most problems at no charge, and offer repair suggestions and alternatives. The owner could do the repairs himself, or at least make an educated decision on how to proceed. Sometimes that involved photocopying a few pages from a service manual, borrowing a special tool, or selling parts at a discount. The point was there were "customer-friendly" business practices that would help a customer a lot more than it hurt the dealership.
To get back to your problem, the first thing you need to do is state the exact problem. You're either seeing water, rust, stains, or all of those. If there's rust or stains but nothing is wet, those could be from a previous problem that has been repaired.
If there's water getting inside, you're the expert who is going to diagnose that, then we can make an informed decision on whether it is up to someone else to pay to fix it. For some hints to get started, look at how high up you see a stain, and if that runs all the way around the passenger compartment. That will tell us if it was due to trapped standing water, as in a flooded vehicle, or if water is running in one area up high, and running straight down. If you see droplets up high, especially on or above windows, and it's spread out over a large area, that's from condensation. I get that often in my minivan. To solve it, I just leave one window rolled down 1/4" in humid weather.
If you find evidence of water in the rear, I prefer to remove the trim panels, and dry the area, then I crawl inside and have a helper spray water up high, so it rains down in a normal fashion. If water is directed upward with a hard stream from a garden hose, water can be expected to infiltrate through vents and exhauster ports. Watch with a flashlight to see if water is sneaking in around weather seals, light housings, antenna bases, and things like that. If you see leakage around a weatherstrip, dry it, then spray the door lightly with leak-tracing powder. Close the hatch or door gently, open it, then check for places where the powder did not transfer to the weather seal. If the seal is deformed in one spot, such as when an antenna cable was run over it, you might get it straightened out by heating it a little with a hot-air gun. Another trick is to cut a slit on the side of it, then stick in a piece of vacuum hose or washer hose. If a longer section isn't sitting up high enough, you can pop the seal off, stick a piece of washer hose into the groove, then slide it back on. The hose will hold the seal up closer to the door panel. Related to this, check the adjustment of the door. Specifically, look for an edge that sits "proud" of the adjacent panel. Adjusting the hinges or the latch will close the door tighter against the seal. We use a "special tool" when testing how well a weatherstrip seals. That is a dollar bill. Close the door with the dollar draped over the seal. You're looking for any place where you can slide the dollar sideways or in and out freely. That area needs more pressure on the seal.
For door seals that appear to only leak when driving in rain, check all the tiny holes in it that they're open. Those are meant to allow air in to blow up the seal so it fits tighter when the vehicle is moving.
Just about every Ford truck has water leaking in through a gap in the glue holding the windshield in place. GMs are noted for leaking heater cores. Every brand of car has problems at one time or another with the AC condensate drain becoming plugged with debris, then the water spills over, usually on the front passenger floor. Those are a few examples of things I'm aware of. There was even a case history of a leaking coolant temperature sensor on a front-wheel-drive GM car. The coolant got pushed through the insulation of the wires that ran non-stop, with no connectors in between, to the Engine Computer inside the car, behind the right kick panel. After multiple attempts at solving the wet floor, the mechanic had the presence of mind to wrap the computer in a plastic bag to protect it. In fact, the bag stopped the leak for a few months, until the bag filled up and damaged the computer. That's when the cause became apparent.
My online service manual company is down for the last few days, but when they're up and running again, I'm going to check for service bulletins related to your model. Service bulletins are not recalls or for warranty repairs. They are simply problems and their elusive solutions that others have already figured out. The information is just there to help the rest of us so we don't have to diagnose this all over again.
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019 AT 6:18 PM
