legacycentral bbs

Hello everyone, two days ago my subby broke down with all white smokes and gasoline from the exhaust... In the garage they discovered that some injection circuits of the ECM were blown and that's why the engine was being flooded by 2 of the injectors... The responsible of the burning of those circuits was the water... The ECM was all wet. In rainy weathers, when I park my car outside at night, my car's right-back surface is always wet, and we can't find the source. The day the ECM burned, that surface was wet again and there was a minimum 2 cm. of water on the surface. So, when I was descending upon a hill, that water came down to the front passenger's side surface and it blew my ECM's circuits! (...at least I guess it happened like that.) Now, the ECM is repaired but I must find the source of that wetness or it will burn again. What could you recommend? I checked the glass,the rubbers,even the sunroof but I can't just find it...

I would guess your moonroof is leaking. Take a bucket of water and have a friend pour some around the edges of the moonroof glass while you sit inside the car & look for leaks. If none are obvious, check with your hand along the bottom of the kick panel trim in case it is sneaking down the headliner & a-pillar. If you do this when the car is flat & don't find anything, either repeat it with the car parked on a slope (both nose up & nose down) or brake hard going down a hill and see if water shoots out of somewhere.

You may want to consider pulling up the seat(s) and sticking your hand through the slits in the carpet under the seats. (I'm assuming your carpet has slits like mine does). You can probably reach the slits without removing the seats, but if it's wet under there, you'll be pulling the seats to pop out the carpet anyway. If the padding under the carpet is soaked, you will either want to remove it to dry out or put a small heater under there & move it around a lot to dry out the padding before it starts to smell. This will take many days (ask me how I know). It cold be the drainage hoses in your moonroof are clogged. You could try the compressed air or stiff line snaking trick to clear them out. The back two will be hard to get, impossible for a wagon anyway with the headliner in.

More info here:
http://bbs.legacycentral.org/viewtopic.php?t=183

Good luck.

I'm assuming your ECU is in the front passenger footwell since you have a 97 correct?

When you say right back surface....what area specifically are you talking about? The seat, floor, etc?

Legacy777 wrote:I'm assuming your ECU is in the front passenger footwell since you have a 97 correct?

When you say right back surface....what area specifically are you talking about? The seat, floor, etc?

Yeah,you're right I've a 97 Legacy 2.5 GX Sedan and the ECU is in the front passanger footwell. But as I've mentioned in my first message, the water is leaked to the right backseat floor and when descending from a hill,etc. it flows to the front under the front pass. seat and it harms the ECU-at least the repairman thinks that way because the ECU was all wet when we removed it.

Had an idea, is it hot there? Have you been running the air conditioner? Maybe the drainage tube is plugged up & condensed water is spilling out under carpet?

tonflo wrote:Had an idea, is it hot there? Have you been running the air conditioner? Maybe the drainage tube is plugged up & condensed water is spilling out under carpet?

Absolutely not,we're having winter here and it's cold and it's raining a lot. And my ECU blew up because of the rain water which leaks into the car somehow

I know on the first gen legacy there is a raised portion between the front and rear seat. So I know if water got in the rear seat area, it'd be very difficult to reach the front footwell area. However things may be different on the newer models.

If you are using defrost at all, you will use the A/C system. I'd check the drain on the evap box.

Yeah,you're right and we've checked the a/c unit already but it doesn't seem like there's a problem... I also checked the sunrooof drainages but they are dry. I dried the rear and front carpet last evening with a vacuum machine. But last night it was raining again;so what: when I went to the car to check the situation out, it was all wet again... I'll get crazy of that!!! I checked every point but no,no,no... I can't just find the source of the leakage,neither the repairmen... I also pulled the rear seat and checked the luggage area ('97 Sedan) ,the rear glass,the isolation around the moonroof.. but no result... I think I'm gonna give it up and I will have to dry my car's floor every single day not to blow the ECU up!!!

How about the gasket around the windshield?

Pull the seats and all the carpet out. Have someone run the hose all around the car while your or someone sits in it. Watch and see if you can identify where the water is coming from.

You may want to pull the headliner too for the water test. Or if you can't find it with seats & carpet out, that would be the next step.

If you car sits in the rain, does it get wet? i was thinking maybe there is a leak somewhere on the bottom, since it seems to be eluding everything else. If it were the bottom, you would only get water in the car in floods (probably not ) or when you're running it.

Its unlikely, but this is kind of an unlikely situation...

Yeah!! I got it!!! (I hope ) Today, I made a little test: I sat on the rear seat and a friend of mine sprayed pressurized water to the all points that I was suspicious of like the sunroof, door weatherstrips, rear glass, trunk lid drainages,etc. and look what I've found: I saw little drops which were flowing slowly from the top of the right back quarter glass!! So I think I'm on the right way and I've found the damn leakage sorce at last! I think it's because of molding or isolation problem... or before me, a thief broke it - it happens often here! - and the repairman couldn't fix it properly... So I think that topic is no more an "electrical" one but, well, at least it has something with the ECU Thanks a lot for your kind recommendations and ideas anyway. What are your comments on that quarter glass??

Unfortunately, if the glass is where the leak is, it'll probably have to be removed and resealed