Leaky Lotus - Water Water Everywhere

The sun had gone and the rain had arrived and boy did I know it not having a garage meant the car has to stay out on the street in all weathers. We had had a few showers I the first few months of ownership and I knew that the car wasn’t water tight but it had only bin a few drips and had never bothered me that much. I had had a go at adjusting the windows to make it more water tight and thought I had succeeded. All that was about to change! In the heavy downpours we had in the winter my car started to leak like a sieve but only when parked whilst driving it was fine. Every morning I would come out to the car and the inside was wet the sill pads were soaked as was the seat and the carpets were getting damp.

This inside was not the only problem tho I was having trouble getting the car to start and originally thought that it was a battery problem. So I had the battery tested and it was fine so it was off to the forums to look for other suggestions of what it might be. Most of the people on the forum who had similar problems said that it was water getting into the ignition components spark plugs, dizzy cap etc… after a quick check on my car this also appeared to be what was causing my problem as water had gotten onto the spark plugs.

This was the first thing to get sorted I would worry about the inside later. The first thing I did was to get all the spark plugs out and dry them off. In doing this I noticed that my HT leads were not in the best condition ; a piece of plastic came away from the second lead and fell down into spark plug tube it took a good half hour with a screwdriver wrapped in cellotape to get the thing out as the spark plugs are set quite deep in the engine. Once the plugs were out they didn’t look to cleaver either so I decided to replace the lot: Spark Plugs, HT Leads, Dizzy Cap and Rotor Arm. I also decided that I would refit the original spark plug cover as the 3rd party aluminium one fitted by the previous owner didn’t seal very well although it did look nice.

Once all the bits arrived I set about fitting them took me all morning I am not the most mechanically minded and have never really done any maintenance on a car so took it slowly and made sure everything was right. The biggest problem I had in the whole job was getting the HT lead from the coil onto the dizzy cap nearly had to dislocate my arm getting it onto the coil but after a few minutes of fiddling and a lot of swearing I finally got it on. Now it was time to test a quick check to make sure I hadn’t missed anything and turn the key whoo!!!! It started first time and was now idling much better as well probably because everything was now dry!

That was the engine sorted we have had quite a few heavy down pours since and the problem has never reoccurred. Thanks I think to the new HT leads that had a better seal onto the dizzy cap and spark plugs and also the replacement of the spark plug cover that helped stop the water getting in, in the first place. Now it was time to move to move onto the other leak and see what I could do there.

Getting the inside of the car water tight would take me weeks!!! No matter what I did I just couldn’t get the water to stop coming in. My 1st attempt was to adjusted the angle of the windows front to back to make them line up better with the soft top this seemed to improve matters but the water was still getting in.

I then decided to tackle the soft top the fabric had come away from the front plastic strip in the corners and this seemed to be were the majority of the water was getting in. So one day when it wasn’t raining off came the soft top into the front room were I sat with it on my knee with a needle and thread and sewed the corners back down yes sewed not what I was ever expecting to do on a car repair either!!! Once this was done the soft top was reproofed with some tent water proofer before going back onto the car. This again improved the cars water tightness but the battle wasn’t over yet.

Even tho I had adjusted the windows front to back they still didn’t seem to be making proper contact with door seals on the frame. I quick look in my service manual reviled that I could tilt the windows inwards by adjusting 4 screws on the bottom of the door. These were adjusted on both sides to get the windows touching the seal all the way up. Success the car was now 98% water tight some water seemed to be getting in under the door seal on inspection son of the seal had come away from the pillar slightly these were stuck back down and success the car now appears to be water tight!!! even in the heaviest of downpours.

All of the above took me weeks to get sorted and there were times when I would have quite happily have gotten rid of the car. I have to use it everyday and getting into a wet car every morning was just wearing me down a ruining my enjoyment of it. Thankfully with a bit of time and effort the car can be made water proof it just takes a lot of fiddling to get everything set up just right. After you drive the car again after all of the troubles you remember why you got it in the first place it is such a joy to drive it always puts a smile on my face its even better now it doesn’t leak.