Interior water leaks and other issues - Looking for advice post Hurricane Ian

Ask technical questions or post on problems/issues related to the Kizashi under this topic. Symptoms and pictures of your problem are a good idea.
NOTE: Any car related technical question can be posted here.
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Croccydile
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Oct 02, 2022 2:37 pm

Greetings

I am a car repair novice so please bear with me.

Preface: I am a second hand 2013 Kizashi owner. I got mine used in 2018 for a low price as it had around 130k miles then, and currently I am just past 195k miles. I am not expecting to get much more out of this vehicle and despite the situation with the used/new car market I am looking at alternatives rather than sinking much more money into this thing. I estimate that at least $5000-$6000 has been spent on parts since 2018. Part of which was the CVT having a catastrophic failure and getting it replaced with a used one.

Water leaks

The day after hurricane Ian (Friday 2022-09-30) I inspect my car to see how well it fared, and I was greeted with the drivers side front and rear floor carpets were SOAKING wet, although no visible standing water. I had been suspect of water intrusion or poor sealing for the past month or two given every time it rains my car would feel humid inside along with fogging of the windows in the Florida sun, and the hurricane has made it obvious.

Given there can be multiple areas of water intrusion I am struggling to determine where a possible cause can be, other than first looking at the door and frame weatherstripping. While the front and rear drivers side carpet were wet, the carpet under the seat was dry which leads me to believe its coming from somewhere on the doors. I did notice moisture/wetness running down the front side of the door panel plastic that meets the frame when the door is open.

The weatherstripping on all the doors is flat, which I imagine is a very bad thing (tm). Replacement weatherstripping from megazip for all of the door and frames appears to be close to $1000 which I'd rather put toward finding a different car at this point. I'm looking at doing what I can to "rope the seals" using surgical tubing and silicone spray to rejuvenate them the best I can.

Timing cover gasket

A previous unsolved issue is the timing cover has a slow oil leak. I've had to have the serpentine belt replaced twice now in as many years because of this. Is it even possible to get this part anymore? The local repair shop I go to can't obtain this part, as such I've just had to deal with the possibility of the serpentine belt failing once again at any time.

Thank you

This post is a complete shot in the dark, so any advice will be greatly appreciated!
old tech
Posts: 705
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2018 1:51 pm
Location: n/w pennsysvania

On the water leak, I have found tail lights to be a problem leaking water in. If this is the case you’ll have a wet backseat bottom. A cure for this is to just pull the tail light and drill a couple drain holes just behind the front of the lens. I have had a sun roof drain tube get pulled off in leak . On the timing cover, there is no gasket to buy that’s done with silicone. There is a valve cover gasket however that is very common to leak after 120,000 miles


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