Rear hatch leaking to inside!—Now with pictures of hatch rust being born lol

My 4runner lives inside most of the time. But the garage gets messy with projects in the summer, so it spends a good amount of time outside this time of the year.

We’ve had some rain showers over the last week, and first time I’ve opened the hatch for the day, I’ve noticed this.



It’s definitely running inside. Any chance that there are drain holes in the body under that area to get rid of the water? Or will I need to take all that apart to dry out the inside?

 

Did you find water inside the rear hatch itself? It supposedly has drains, but maybe those are clogged up and the water is getting in the window seal and accumulating...?

 

Mine does the same. I bought a new seal but haven't swapped it. I'd check under the cargo area carpet and possible the front and rear passenger side floor pans.

 

Ok, was hoping for the easy way, but I guess I’m gonna have to pull it all out again. I had everything out a few weeks ago lol.

No standing water inside the hatch. Drain holes are clear. But I took the plastic hatch panel off to explore the area a bit to see how water it got in. I found leak traces through the mounting holes for the plastic hatch panel (where the plastic clips go through the sheet metal). Basically, water trickled in through the holes, filtered down the inside surface of the hatch, and filtered inside the vehicle at the bottom of the plastic hatch panel. Which unfortunately, is on the other side of the seal made by the weather stripping. I’m gonna post up some pictures in a bit.

 

Hopefully you don't find anything. I was just going nuts on finding the source for a couple of years and it turned out to all be from the rear hatch. I dam up the rear with towels when it rains and they get soaked. There is a TSB for a leak but I think it's mostly to replace the soaked sound deadening. I never took it in because I figure I would get denied since I removed the rear floor trim and added the sub crossover harness.

 

Did you find out how water got into your hatch to the inside?

I have a working theory on what’s causing water to get in. I’m editing some pics a bit to try to show what I’m thinking is the culprit for mine.

 

Ok, this is a bit of a picture dump. I’ve tried to orient them so that “down” on the picture is “down” on the hatch. It might help understanding what’s being pictures. Some may look a bit weird because of that.

Basically, it looks like the holes used for the plastic clips, or plastic “thread bases” for screws (copper green plastic clips) get water flowing over them, which basically wicks water into the cabin-facing surface of the hatch. Basically, the main hatch weatherstripping itself, doesn’t seem to be the culprit in this leak to the inside (at least in my particular case. I also checked the plastic vapor barrier, and it’s fully sealed all the way around.

This was my first clue of what the problem was. This is looking up through the hole for the plastic handholds ( the black plastic is the speaker surround, and the white clip that has water flowing over it is from the plastic hatch panel).


And once I took the interior plastic hatch panel off, I could see the traces of where water filtered in through/around those plastic clips. Most of the clip holes that were on the lower end of the hatch had water traces.






This one below is concerning too from the perspective of potential structural rust to the hatch. This was a leak to the cabin-interior side, around the screw that holds the metal window track. I’m pretty sure the white powdery stuff in the that dripped down is evaporated salt.





This is the other side to show what that screw is actually holding (I had just finished lathering it all up with wool wax using a brush.




Below, is what the clips themselves look like. Each of them have a thin foam gasket. I’m guessing they end up compressing with time, or as dust gets in them it starts to compromise their ability to keep water from filtering cabin-side.


I didn’t want to put any silicone or rtv on those gaskets in case I wanted to take everything off again. So I slathered a bit of woolwax over them, hoping it would be enough to complete a seal for the water that passes over them. I also slathered woolwax over the other side of the clips in the interior of the hatch itself (at least the clips I could reach with the speakers brackets and the plastic handholds removed). Access is pretty tight to reach some of these inside the hatch cavity.








Even a rubber plug on the cabin-side surface was hiding a little water evidence, with the start of rust clearly visible.

The worst spot (below) was a bracket that holds a plastic box (not sure what it is) on the cabin-side. The bracket itself doesn’t seem to have too much of a structural load, so I’m not so worried about rust on it, itself. But right behind it, in the hatch cavity, is where the door latch motor is. Access to coat this area within the cavity was very limited without taking the vapor barrier off. I didn’t want to take it off, so I just took this bracket off and slathered on woolwax on all the mating surfaces behind it on the cabin-side surface of the hatch, with the hope it forms a seal. The hatch sheet metal and paint itself was not rusted behind this bracket.




I cleaned off all the water traces on the cabin side surface before reinstalling the hatch panel, so maybe I can tell where it leaks if it leaks again. Already, I can see in my pictures different spots I didn’t get to.
Hopefully Im on the right track. I dont want to take the carpet out to dry if it’s just gonna wet wet again!

Edit: as far as the cause at to why the little gaskets are filtering water? This is the first time I’m noticing a leak, so they obviously worked fine for the first 70k miles. I’m guessing all the dust and shaking and flexing my 4runner has had maybe compressed them? Or they loaded up with dust and they turned into wicks instead of gaskets? Those are my best guesses.

 

Interesting. The plastic clip gaskets are for noise/vibration suppression. I'm doubtful its intended to keep water out. How's the moisture within the vapor barrier?

 

I hope they were intended to keep water out! It’s clear the “controlled leak path” inside the hatch cavity routes water directly over those clips.

The vapor barrier is itself a “wall” of the hatch cavity. The cavity has good drainage and no accumulated dust to hold moisture, so I don’t think condensation is playing any role here.

This shows the cavity space with the bottom surface of the hatch inside visible. Drain holes are nice and clean.


In my first post, the water you see leaking past the threshold is from a rain shower a few hours before I opened the hatch.

 

By chance, we just got a heavy rain shower that lasted about 4 or 5 min. Popped the hatch to look for leaks. The threshold was dry, but i could see water accumulating at the bottom of where the interior hatch plastic panel meets the hatch steel. So if the rain lasted a little longer it would have started flowing onto the threshold and down on the carpet.







In the pic above, the left water line is from where the weatherstripping seals. The problem area is to the right, where the water can be seen between the plastic and metal (which is on the cabin-side of the weather stripping).

Maybe it’s because I didn’t slather all of the clips (especially the green ones).

I’m guessing these leak to some degree on all of them, but generally the water is of such small quantity that it usually evaporates when the vehicle is newer.

Welp, I guess I’ll leave it outside a while longer to see of I get another big leak. If so I might have to take the vapor barrier off and get in there with some roofing tar or something

 

I was off the understanding that water will enter the rear hatch if it rains. It is not a perfect seal. But because it has drain holes, it would simply flow down from the inside hatch part into the drain and outside and would wet the plastic area on top of the rear bumper.
As long as it's not accumulating which I would assume it would not unless the drain holes are clogged it should not be a problem.

 

Yes, water will flow in a pre-designed path towards the bottom of the hatch cavity, where it drains out. That’s not my problem.

My problem that the controlled leak path inside the cavity flows over plastic clips that are on the cabin side of the hatch structure. Water is wicking past those clips, into the cabin-side of the hatch. In enough quantity to simply drip onto the carpet. You can see the evidence of the drips in my picures.

 

Could you leave the plastic trim off, place a garden hose on the roof so that the water runs down the hatch and then sit in the cargo area with the hatch closed to see where the water is coming in?

 

Got it! That's strange that water is running over all those things before seeping out.
As for vapor barrier, I simply peeled the top part and let it hang to get access behind it when adding some sound deadening. Then simply stuck it back in place. Removing it whole is messy and it's hard to put it back again. Another way to access it is by removing the speakers. The speaker cavities are quite big.

 

I’ll probably peel it off the top, like you suggest to not make a mess of things. That sealant is quite the tacky stuff!

I’m still a little confused why those leak paths go right over the clips. The Toyota design elves think of everything, so not sure how this one got passed them. Or maybe it’s just something on mine.

General request to anyone reading this thread that keeps their 4runner outside: I would really appreciate a picture of the back of the speaker taken through the hole where the handhold clips in. The handhold cup is really easy to take off, just get a fingernail under the wider lenghth and flex it slightly, and pull. Comes off with light force. The speaker is directly above the hole, so the picture should be fairly easy to take.

If this is all by design (and manufacturing is perfectly consistent) then everyone should have the same water stain leaving the bottom of the “speaker bucket” that leads to the white clip. Like this picture:

If someone takes the picture while everything is dry, then maybe it will be a light stain thats hard to get on camera. But if it just rained, there should be water. If others don’t have any evidence of water, then maybe something else is wrong on mine to cause the water to flow over those clips. Maybe I just need new weatherstripping at the bottom of the window area? Kinda weird to think its the weatherstripping since it's literally full holes to let water through, but who knows…

 

I ll take a picture sometime tomorrow. I work on weekends but will squeeze this in. I have removed those handhold multiple times to clean the area so they pop right out. Where exactly would you like me to place the phone camera?
Heads-up, I have sound deadening on that outer sheet. So I hope you can see what you intend to see.

 

I know your 4Runner is only 3 years old, but maybe replacing the window weather strip might help keep some of the water out?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=spavqLwC0zg

 

Once you look up into the hole, you’ll see the speaker. There is a little notch at the bottom to allow water to drain down. Take a pic of that, but also frame the white clip below it into the picture. All this is on the inner wall of cavity. It will look just like the last picture I posted as soon as you look up. Thanks!

 

I appreciate the link, I might end up doing that. The weather stripping actually has holes all along its length it to let water into the hatch. But maybe there is something disfigured or messed up in a way that funnel the water in the wrong directions? Just taking guesses here. I have scrubbed that weatherstip clean with a wet cloth to get dust out in the past. Maybe that screwed them up.

But if I see pics from others that show water stains taking the same route as mine, then the weather stripping at the window might be “normal” as is.

 

Here you go!

 

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Thank you! Seems like water has stained the same area for you too. Never noticed any water on top of the threshold of the hatch area?

 

I probably did . But dint think about it much. I clean it often and fluid filmed it. That's all the time and effort I am willing to put into it.

 

Now this makes me wonder, what is the best and efficient fix ?

 

To be determined!

I wish I knew. I took a look brief look at the weather stripping for the hatch window itself. It looks ok, but I don’t know what I don’t know lol. There are two side pieces, an inner strip, and an outside strip. There are gaps on the sides of the outside strip, which I assume are by design to funnel water to the periphery of the hatch cavity. The gaps looks a bit wide, so I smooshed things around to get the gaps to close slightly. I did that because maybe it was just allowing too much water in. But I wont know if that will help until we get more rain here.

If that that doesnt help, I’ll just get new weatherstripping. My woolwax attempts won’t be a loss since at least I finally got a chance to identify and rustproof some of the more sensitive spots.

I’m probably overthinking the whole thing, but don’t like the idea of that much water getting inside under the carpet.

 

That’s a great idea actually. Might do this when I get around to emptying the cargo area to look under the carpet.

 

Passenger side of the hatch seal. I partially removed it and completely removed the trim to install the sub crossover harness. I tried adding 3M weatherstripping adhesive but it didn’t help so I purchased the seal but haven’t swapped it. The factory uses something similar.

 

@McSpazatron, I have the same staining in my hatch, although very faint. I’ve never noticed any interior water infiltration, but I will probably put a dab of caulk or RTV over that clip, and create a gutter-like channel to divert any water away.

 

I have water leakage as well and my “door open” light indicator stays on while it rains and until it is dry. It beeps until the indicator light goes off. Also, my rear windshield wipe and rear defrost do not work. I don’t have much interior cabin leakage but I have definitely had it near the gate lock latch hook. I have not tried to unclog the drainage plugs etc. Has anyone else experienced these issues? If so, how was it resolved. Thanks