Multispace Roof

[bigsacs]

£398.06 inc VAT!! Coco thats a heck of a price. Looks like l'll dry off and reseal the old one unless l can find a better price. Thankfully water isn't getting to the inside of the car but l'd imagine water trapped inside the inner & outer roof space would freeze, expand and contract eventually breaking through somewhere. Citroens, don't you just love (hate) em?

[bigsacs]

This interests me.

Which seal seems to be most regularly at fault? The seal for the whole modutop or the individual window seals?

thurrockdave, on my blingo the two front modutop windows have a small gap at each front corner. I assume water gets in here and collects until it dribbles out at the front where the modutop joins the roof. I sqeeezed sealant in each corner and the quantity of water which dribbled out as the sealant went in was amazing. I've also partially removed the modutop to roof rubber seal which came out easily, dried it off and used sealant to reaffix it. Here's hoping its at least watertight now. It was easy to do and the excess sealant cleaned away with a flexi scraper and some white spirit. All in about 45 mins. I suspect the best way would be a complete new seal but not at almost £400.

[thurrockdave]

Cheers for that, a job for next summer methinks.

[Casper]

I too have had a dribble of water from the front left hand corner of the outer seal of my Modutop (2004 Mk2 Multispace). Fortuntely, there is no sign of any water leak to the interior, but I am concerned that any water trapped may freeze, expand and damage the inner bonding. I have read the various posts on this but am not clear whether the various suggestions have cured the problem, so I thought I'd share my own findings in trying to fix it, and invite any comments/suggestions.

The outer seal seems to have aged and buckled, and to have lost some of its flexibility. It was a tight fit against the panel and roof at the back of the car, but slid around very easily and was not straight at the front. I suspect somebody has tried to fix this problem before! The seal lifted out of its channel easily at the front so (perhaps foolishly!) I carefully took it out completely. It is clear that, in manufacture, the whole roof panel is pushed up into an aperture cut into the roof, from the inside of the vehicle and then bonded into place, leaving a channel all around into which the outer seal fits. Unlike a windscreen seal, this outer seal serves no structural purpose and is just to keep water out of the channel and away from the panel bonding. The seal clips onto the metalwork of the aperture with a flap onto the roof panel. In fact the roof panel sits very slightly proud of the roof aperture and this no doubt helps it to seal. A replacement seal is available as a spare part (albeit at some cost, as pointed out previously!) so it must be possible to fit it from the outside of the vehicle, although I guess it might be quite difficult -- we'll see when I come to do it! In original manufacture, I guess the seal might have been fitted before the panel was lifted up and bonded.

I inspected my five glass panels and, like others, found the seal to the panel to be very poor. In particular, there were clear gaps at several of the corners, although they must have sealed further down because I have not experienced any water ingress into the interior. I assume any leak here would just just drip into the interior of the car or onto the shelves of the modutop. I'm not sure if the construction of the modutop would allow water to run out anywhere else. More worrying, is how water runs down the front of the vehicle and onto the electrics, as reported by some people. I can only assume that this comes via a defect in the bonding at the front edge of the panel, such that any water in the "channel" runs down inside. Unlike some sunroofs, there doesn't seem to be a drain hole to the outside.

So, what have I done? Firstly, I have sealed all five glass panels under the outer lip of the seal with "Captain Tolleys Creeping Crack Cure". (http://www.captaintolley.com). This is a very thin water based liquid that creeps by capillary action into fine cracks and dries to a clear flexible seal. It can be applied with a hypodermic syringe. This product is well known in caravan and marine circles where it is used to stop leaks around windows and panels. A friend has used it succesfully on a couple of car sunroofs where dealers had failed to fix the problem. I have no connection with the company, by the way, but I did ring them and they confirmed that it should be suitable for this application. I then filled the gaps at the corners of the glass panels with Indasa black windscreen sealant. I then brushed on some more Tolley's over the top of the seals in case there were any remaining cracks. Until set, Tolley's is white so it is easy to see where it is and to clear up the XS (with Meths or White Spirit).

I also syringed some Tolley's all around the outer seal channel, hoping that it would seal any minor flaw in the panel bonding. I syringed out the surplus and it is currently drying.
The next step is to try and refit the outer seal (or a new one, heavens forbid!). I did wonder whether it might be better to just ditch the seal and simply fill the channel with some sort of liquid rubber or other suitable flexible sealant. It should be possible to smooth it off to a neat fillet. It's not as if it ever needs to come out again. I have emailed one of the sealant manufacturers and asked if they have a suitable product.

So there we have it. I hope it all works. I'll let you know in due course, but in the meantime thought all this might be of interest to anyone else trying something similar. DYOR, of course, but comments welcome.