Atmospheric River - in my door jamb

[Bekaykay]

Hi all. I have a new to me 1995 DX SC that has a number of problems I did not catch when I inspected it. Today's problem is water.

The whole rear carpet is wet and I haven't found the leak yet. Rubber is good all around. More immediately concerning is the inner door jamb on the driver's side is accumulating a lake of water that gushes out when I open the door after a few hours in the rain. With the plastic trim removed, I can see it's holding a pool there. This whole area is filled and I have to stop it up with a tag. There is a hole with a rubber stopper that looked like it would be the obvious solution, but it leads into the frame rail with no obvious exit. Any thoughts on this? I clearly don't want to hold water in the frame underneath.

[Previologist]

Can't help you on the river in your door jamb, but rear vent window latches can sometimes seem closed when they aren't, or they can get loose with age. So I'd check those if you haven't. I'll be interested to know what the cause is when you figure it out

[Bekaykay]

I'll keep checking those. They were dry. Strangely enough, there was a small drip from the passenger side rear one that doesn't open. And it's on the "good side" that doesn't have sun damage. Not enough to wet the carpet.

Got a nice reward at least on my way home from work. The rain aint all bad.

[Jonny]

Your door jamb flood and your wet rear carpet may be related. Once I was storing a 5 gallon jug of water just inside the sliding door. This leaked and manifested itself as a pool at the passenger door right at the same place as yours. It's a low point and the water from the jug in the back went there. I'd concentrate on solving the rear leak and see if this fixes everything. You may have to start taking stuff apart if you can't find the point of ingress, so you can more easily see evidence of water behind things. Seats, side panels, carpet, fun stuff.
While you're at it, the drains in the front doors (right at the front of the bottom sill behind the rubber) are prone to plugging from debris ingress as water and crap runs down the window into the door. A blocked drain holds water inside the door and rots it. Check these too.

door_drain.jpg

[Bekaykay]

Yep, cleaning out those drain plugs was literally the first thing I did when I got the van. I think you've got the right idea with the back-to-front water movement, but in the opposite direction. I park nose-uphill, and since I've kept up with sopping up the little lake from the door jamb, it hasn't got wet in the rear again.

[SixONine]

My 94-1/2 LE SC has those feature options, also! My passenger door efficiently collects rainwater through a clever door- integrated Cascading Runoff Reserve Cistern (CRRC) system that allows water passing over the surface of the window to bypass the exterior rubber window swipe seal and flow directly into the ample inner-door water reservoir. This is very helpful for maintaining center of gravity ballast, supplementary sway control, engine coolant replenishment under emergency conditions, and even possibly lifesaving water reserve in the event of emergency.
It's just another one of those innovative, before it's time, secret little gem features of the Previa, along with the hidden oven hatch under the carpet between the seats for cooking meals on the road, the import cargo holds under the body just forward of the fuel tank on the left side and in the length between the right hand wheel wells under the body, and the Periscope viewer mounted inside the grill of the rear AC/heater unit.
The rear getting wet on my van is a feature flaw rather than a feature option. Rain water seeps in through the top right corner of the hatch seal and rear window. It tickles a long a slow path under the interior panel, along the bottom edge of the rear right window seal, and then becomes free range marshland. This little leak has become increasingly more noticable during the past 9 months since my rear window was removed by vandals.