Thread: Leaky door seals

Hi Folks - new member here with a query.

I have recently bought a 2005 model Fabia (1.4 Tdi), which I am very pleased with on the whole. Just one thing I have noticed since we have had some very wet weather recently, and I wondered if anybody else has suffered with:

After heavy or prolonged rain, water seems to pool somewhere around the bottoms of the doors and a bit of it works its way around the rubber door seals and trickles down into the footwells. Not a huge amount, but enough to cause some dampness on the carpets - not what I really want in the long term! The problem is worse on the rear doors. Is the rubber door seal design a known weak spot on the Fabia - has there perhaps been a dealer recall to fix this problem that I am not aware of? All my door seals appear to be in good condition with no obvious rips or tears, panel fit seems good and the car is not recorded as ever having been in an accident - my mechanic who looks after servicing for me even commented that it was a good straight car in his view.

Any ideas on how I should go about tackling this annoying water seepage problem before it causes lasting damage?

Regards,

Jason

Problem door seals are a commmon fault on the Fabia's, i had mine re done last year and they have been fine since. Just get them replaced.

Wife yesterday got back to car in pouring rain to find it had unlocked itself & opened the front windows.
When this happened a couple of years ago the dealer ' fixed it ' -at a price!
Think it's something to do with nearside electrical plug to door getting wet.

Originally Posted by johnp

Problem door seals are a commmon fault on the Fabia's, i had mine re done last year and they have been fine since. Just get them replaced.

Thanks John. I actually did a bit more "digging" on line sice I posted the original message and came up with something interesting. Anyone having this similar problem to mine should take a visit to Youtube.com and do a search for:

"skoda fabia rear door seals fix"

The 4 min 41 sec fix video that comes up is very interesting. It would appear that the water is actually getting in through the doors and seeping around a badly designed / executed seal between the door itself and the interior door trim panel. It then drips down off the interior trim panel and straight into the rear footwells! It explains why the lower part of my door trim panels were also damp after heavy rain. I had been puzzling over this as my main rubber "all around" door seals on each door aperture all seemed to be in such excellent condition.

I wonder if Skoda UK are aware of this design problem with the poor seal between the door and the trim panel?

Jason

Hi,

I've got a 54 plate Fabia 1.2 and it's got the same problem. I watched the youtube video and it looks relatively straight forward but I guarantee that it would take me a day, something would go wrong and I wouldn't be able to get the door back on.

Anyway, I phoned the local Skoda dealer and they quoted £106 inc VAT for sealing both rear doors - he described exactly what was in the video. Does that sound reasonable?

Also, I bought the car second hand from a skoda dealer and it comes with a 12 month warranty. Should this be covered under that? They said it wasn't but "seals" aren't under the list of excluded parts and I don't know if I should argue it.

Many thanks,

Dave

it certainly should be covered. It's a known DESIGN FAULT and you should point both the dealer and Skoda UK to this thread. Isn't it great that that the motor industry still profits from the buyers' ignorance of their failings but that Forums like this will help address the balance. Funnily enough our 02 Fabia, bought second-hand at four years old, suffered from this problem but the dealer charged us rather than admitting that Skoda got it wrong......
are they really such good value and 'superior build qaulity' as we are led to believe?

Just a quick update on the resolution of this problem. Had a local garage re-seal both rear doors for me a few days ago for the pretty reasonable price of £55. Decided I would rather somebody with a proper workshop fiddle around with getting the door cards off without damaging them, rather than me risk bodging the job up! I don't mind playing with spanners and screwdrivers etc, but anything to do with trim / bodywork defeats me I'm afraid. Anyway, the repair seems to have been entirely successful - no more water leaking through into my rear footwells and ruining the carpets. The garage that did the job for me was Jean-Pierre of the Shirley area in Southampton. They actually used to be a Skoda main dealer a few years ago, but I think they lost the franchise / main-dealer status when VW got their feet under the table fully - think that although they had a good reputation with their customers, their site was too small for what the VW group expected from a main dealer. I guess that not being positioned on a main road and not having a nice big car park counted against them in that respect. Anyway, they carry on doing a lot of work on Skodas as an independant specialist - from my experience they seem to be a competent and fair garage to do business with.

Jason

Originally Posted by TottonFabia

Hi Folks - new member here with a query.

I have recently bought a 2005 model Fabia (1.4 Tdi), which I am very pleased with on the whole. Just one thing I have noticed since we have had some very wet weather recently, and I wondered if anybody else has suffered with:

After heavy or prolonged rain, water seems to pool somewhere around the bottoms of the doors and a bit of it works its way around the rubber door seals and trickles down into the footwells. Not a huge amount, but enough to cause some dampness on the carpets - not what I really want in the long term! The problem is worse on the rear doors. Is the rubber door seal design a known weak spot on the Fabia - has there perhaps been a dealer recall to fix this problem that I am not aware of? All my door seals appear to be in good condition with no obvious rips or tears, panel fit seems good and the car is not recorded as ever having been in an accident - my mechanic who looks after servicing for me even commented that it was a good straight car in his view.

Any ideas on how I should go about tackling this annoying water seepage problem before it causes lasting damage?

Regards,

Jason

I know I am a few months out on this one, but I have a 2001 Fabia SDI with exactly the same problem. If it is a design fault then Skoda should rectify it.
Andy

I brought my new fabia in april 2010 brand new.
On washing my car after a week i notice water coming in via the doors.my car as been in the garage twice now and all the doors seals have been changed which made it worse.
Lucky enough the weather as been good but last night very bad down pour of rain and guess what-letting in water.
Skoda customer services are aware and i have a case number.someone from the factory is coming over to england to see what is going on as i am not the only one with this problem

Thanks all I am having problems with leaking, bottom of trim wet etc. Mine is a 2000 Fabia Estate. I will watch youtube. Thanks again.