Hey folks....
So a water leak has appeared towards the back of my 2012 Journey moon roof. Its not dripping into the front passenger area but soaking the headliner of the middle passenger side area of the back seat. Its only really bad when we get these soaking rains. I checked the water flow for the two front moon roof drains and they drain fine. Problem is, the car is usually parked slightly uphill so water flows towards the back - specifically the passenger side. I'm suspecting the passenger side rear drain is partially/fully clogged. Further problem is, access to these drains appears to be only from under the headliner just above the back seats. I do a lot of my own work on most anything and I'll open this up if I have to but I was hoping I could access the drains from the bottom.

Plan is to run some string trimmer cord up the drain from the bottom and see if I can poke thru the clog. Problem is - I don't seem to be able to find where the drain exits under the body. Online images seem to show me kinda where the driver rear side drain may be located but nothing clean for the passenger side. There is a slow drip coming from under that side leading me to think its a partial clog and it simply being overwhelmed with our 2" rainstorms that keep coming thru - i wish it would stop raining! Anyway, that drip seems to be coming from a uni-frame-rail right behind the rear door C pillar. This would make sense that its in this area but I see nothing.

Any advice on this before I approach from the top (a much larger job than just a poke up the tube)... anyone else dealt with this?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts....

 

Try a can of compressed air or even an air compressor if you have one or if you know someone who does.

 

Okay, so I found the two rear drains - they are behind the rear wheels, high up over the two rear mufflers. After running some water down both troughs of the moon roof, its clear that the passenger side rear drain was clogged. The driver side rear drain was flowing just fine. Tried running some string trimmer cord up there and I could only get about 6" then dead stop. So, I decided to enter from the top under the headliner.

I removed both hand grasps (2 screws each), the 3 screws holding the sun visor, the upper B pillar trim (one screw), the upper C pillar trim (one screw) and the upper D pillar trim (two screws and a seat belt pivot). Tools needed were only a long phillips screwdriver, a couple of small T drivers, a star50 socket (third row seat belt pivot) and a small trim panel tool. Most screws were easy to remove but mixed in size and style - kinda random. Why not one size screw everywhere Chrysler??? There was a phillips on the D pillar that was very deep under the screw cover. Highly recommend magnetic drivers. Removing these pieces allowed easy drop down (about 4") of the headliner on the passenger side and access to the drain tube connection that is roughly aligned with the front edge of the C pillar.

Once I unplugged the drain tube, I ran a short section of trimmer cord back thru the drain nipple - appeared all clear but hard to tell. Again tried to run the trimmer cord down the drain tube and this time only got about 2" and dead stop. I thought about firing up the air compressor and blowing thru it but after some further reading didn't want to chance blowing the tube off the bottom connection so I opted to just blow my own air down the tube drinking-straw style. Worked like a champ.

Reconnected everything, ran a LOT of water down the trough from the sunroof opening and it all flows just fine. Buttoned everything back up and so far so good. We get another soaker tonight so the real test is coming. Stop raining already!

Things to watch for... the side airbags are right behind that headliner above the door opening. They are not in the way of access to the drain tube at all and are always above and behind your hands while working. Just know they are there and leave them alone. Remove any jewelry to prevent any unintended electrical shorting. Also, when putting it all back together, make sure the door and rear hatch weather stripping covers back over the edge of the headliner. Its designed to be that way - you'll see it when you pull the headliner away from the roof - just make sure it goes back like it was when you started. Finally be easy with the headliner, it seems like it would be easy to bend/tear if you try be rough with it which makes sense as the air bags would have to blow right thru it when triggered.

No idea if anyone has ever dealt with this before on their own in a Journey but it really is pretty easy to handle for a typical DIYer. At one point many years ago, there was a tech bulletin (sorry don't know the number) advising roof leaks are probably crushed plastic drain tubes from factory assembly. I had this issue back in 2012 - the dealer replaced the tubes under warranty with heavier duty tubes and I had no further issues until now. Mine were not crushed the second time - just plugged. I figure I saved myself a LOT of $$$ doing this myself. I chatted with the dealer just to see their recommendation.... they wanted me to schedule an over night visit for the day their water-specialist comes in and investigates the issue. Then they would quote me the fix. No idea what that would cost but I'm certain it would not be cheap.