The infamous passenger side leak.

I just got the expensive stuff in the mail I ordered from Kent Products. IT was like $43 with shipping. It came super fast but was like $15 shipping. Let me know if the eastwood flexible sealer works.

On a side note, I need to get some chalk for next time I am working under my truck so I can chalk it, to see how far my truck rolls over me next time. Can you get chalk from Eastwood too?

 

So it was only 43 with the extensions? I went off what I seen of 40 for the can and 40 for extensions so this whole time I was thinking it was gonna be $80 for 1 can

 

They charge less than what they show on the website once you order it. They will email you an invoice a day or two after ordering. the order page will not show price charged or shipping rate. I called them after I ordered and they told me to wait to receive the email invoice before I would know the final cost. Also it is a larger than normal can. One 12" extension comes with the can so no need to order that separately. Price ended up being $26.84 for the can and $13.87 for shipping. total $40.71

 

A friend pointed me here after hearing my complaints about my soaked passenger floorboard, so I'm anxiously awaiting reports of a possible fix..

 

Yeah hopefully me or mikkydee will figure this mess out. Im convinced its coming from the seam that if you were to stick your finger in the wiper motor opening and go straight down 90 degrees as soon as you stick your finger in it and turn your finger back towards you sort of (trying to describe as clearly as possible) The seam in the cowl floor closest to the front of the truck, not the side closer to the windshield.



Im the worst luck havin guy i ever seen. I got in my DD car today (a older honda civic) and wouldnt ya know, SOAKED passenger floorboard lmao So now the carpet is out of that one, and gonna try to track that leak while i juggle this one too.

 

Hopefully I will have time to try out the leak sealer on my floor board leak soon. Right now I am trying to finish up replacing the timing belt and water pump, flushing the Coolant system, rebuilding the power steering pump and flushing out the steering system, replacing valve cover gaskets and doing a tune up. This project has grown bigger with each day I work on it I decide to work on something else. Fortunately I am not completely dependent on it for transportation at the moment as it has been sitting in my garage in pieces as I get the parts and work on it. I guess for 270.000 miles the truck has held up exceptionally. Hoping to get 350,000 miles or more out of it.
I will keep this thread posted how my leak fix endeavors go when I get to that point.

 

Well at least you can work on both leaks at the same time itslogz! Haha! Hang in there bro. I have a transmission going out on my family car (Honda Odyssey Van) as we speak and brakes and rotors need replaced on my wife's BMW Z3 Roadster. Seems I can hardly keep 'em going long enough to get the others fixed!!

 

I think the civic leak was a easy find, behind the corner of the cowl and fender edge theres a small rusted through spot (just a tiny split)that im probably going to blast with flex seal that i bought intending to use for the tacoma, but cant get to where i need of course. I guess for 270k miles and still running strong the civic my has well have a little rust here and there

 

I love these long running Toyotas!

 

I have same problem. Mine doesn't get soaked just damp

 

Mine started out just getting a little damp every once and a while. Then getting more obvious over time. Now it gets completely soaked when it rains. Hopefully the leak chek will fix it. It's ridiculous.

 

WELLLLLL I got my sealant 2 days after ordering it and got a chance to spray some yesterday. I did the entire seem across the cowl floor, closest to the front side. I taped a clothes hanger to the tube that came with the sealant so i could bend it any direction i wanted and use it like a wand sort of. Worked out good, got a few heavy passes all the way down it. Let it set almost 24 hours, flooded the windshield, leak still the same. I'm gonna lose my mind shortly.

 

Heres a picture of what i mean with the clothes hanger and extension, maybe that will help someone else attemping this that hose was useless as stiff and wound up as it was. And also a picture of the wiper motor opening showing what seam im referring to so its crystal clear




Pretty sure my next move is going to be me and my father in law (machinist/welder) taking a damn die grinder to this area and removing a section so EVERYTHING in that area can be clearly seen and im going to fill every damn thing possible and weld/seam seal the section removed back in. That way I will know 100% that its not from that area, if that doesnt work I guess i'm going to have to bite the bullet and remove the dash, i would rather pull the motor out for fun than do that.

 

Well as of right now, the leak has won. I cut a probably 5 inch by 1 inch rectangle out directly above the wiper motor opening so i could clearly get at everything and waited 24 hours, leak still has not changed. I am sincerely blown away that I cannot pin point where this is coming in at. Heres a picture looking into a mirror of the crack i see looking up under the dash, am I missing something here, or wouldnt this be the seam in the forward-most spot of the cowl? The spot where the harness passes through firewall, crack is STRAIGHT up from it, if you follow that on the engine bay side, its right where ive blasted with 4-5 layers of sealer all the way across.


Im at a toss up now at just using a mirror and running the extension with sealer up to the crack and blasting away or pulling the dash. This deal has got me

 

Long time since I screwed with this thing, all my efforts fell short (hence my no updates) and today I ripped the dash out to seal it from the inside I really didnt want to do it that way but obviously it aint gettin done any other way by me atleast.


Ill post some pictures tomorrow, i used a wire wheel to grind into the crack in the above picture to remove the old seam sealer, applied many layers of new sealer and used a tiny painbrush to really press it into the seam and letting it dry over night before leak testing a final time and re assembling. Hopefully this holds it off for the life of the truck

 

Wow, keep us posted brother.

 

Well what is the verdict on this one itslogz? did your last attempt fix the problem? I am going to have to tackle this on my '96 Tacoma soon and am hoping for the best. Mine is kind of an intermittent leak. Hard to make heads or tails of it. Sometimes it leaks when it rains and sometimes not. I have to regularly pull out the passenger mat and let it dry out.
How hard was the dash removal to accomplish?

 

I had a very similar leak- this is how i fixed it. No problems since!
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/passenger-floor-board-leak-fix.432290/

 

Excellent post TacosConqueso. Many thanks for the writeup and visuals. Got busy and still haven't tackled this on mine yet. On a side note I would recommend Lexel Caulk (clear) over silicone caulk. As a professional contractor for years I saw nothing but problems with silicone caulk coming loose from where it was applied. Regardless of the claims, silicone caulk is way over-hyped.

 

Well I finally decided to tackle the infamous passenger side leak. I removed the windshield wipers, wiper motor and wiper cowling. I also removed the wiper linkage to be sure I had good access to where the leak may be originating from. I definitely got a pretty good stream of water into the floor board when doing the water hose test but couldn't get a good visual on where the leak was coming from. so I removed the passenger fender from the truck for better access and visibility. On the 1996 Tacoma removing the fender didn't provide much improvement for visibility as I noticed that some of later model pics showed they had like this guy had.
So I ended up using my Dremel to cut out an access hole so I had a clear line of sight to work with. I just cut out the sides and bent up the metal so I could tack weld it back down when done.

What I determined is that there is a metal vent tube about 3-4 inches square underneath the metal cowling that was the source of my leak. You can see the metal vent tube sticking up in this pic.

Apparently the caulk or sealer used by the manufacturer had long since failed and water was leaking on all sides where this vent protruded up through the frame. I had ordered a can of the high dollar leak stopper in the spray can sometime back, but decided on something a little more significant as bad as the leak was. So I got a couple of tubes of "Leak Stopper" roof leak caulk. I attached a clear tube to the snout on my caulking tube about 14" long and stiffened up but using a piece of old coat hanger I taped to the length of the tubing. This gave me some reach to fit deeply into the area I couldn't get to. I applied the caulk at the offending seams and then lightly smeared it with my finger wherever I could reach it to be sure it pressed in good to the cracked seams and left no air pockets to leak again under the caulk. On the back side of the vent tube I used an artist paint brush I had found in my tool box to press the caulk in the seam good on the back side of the vent tube where I couldn't get my hand into. I tack welded my access hole back in place and primed the area with some rust primer to protect the welded and bare metal from rusting and then I replaced the fender over it. This has seemed to cure my leak problem but you can bet it took me 3 days to do. After all I went through to repair that stupid leak, if it ever starts leaking again.....
I had some really good pics to post on my phone but I was unable to retrieve my phone from the 13 feet of water I dropped it in the other night when fishing. So credit for the pics is given to TacosConQueso here: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/passenger-floor-board-leak-fix.432290/

Conclusion is that your leak could be either in the seam as others have experienced or around this vent the comes up. So SEAL IT ALL good when you are in there!

*NOTE I did not remove my hood as seen in the pics by TacoConQueso