Volkswagen Grand California
Some of you have certainly heard about this problem. A few are still hoping it won’t hit them and still others have had this problem.
Subject: 3rd brake light leaking. It looks like the foam rubber seal on the 3rd brake light is not designed to keep water out permanently. Result: sooner or later, the water runs through the 3rd brake light into the interior and then seeks its way. Water can then leak out of the walls and run down the trim, or even find its way to the very front and come gleefully bubbling out of the grab handles on the driver or passenger side.
Since we didn’t want to wait until it hit us, we took heart and approached the issue proactively. Here is a small guide to what we did (we assume no liability for correctness and completeness)
It was exchanged on our GC600. We don’t know what it looks like with a 680.
Complete duration:
- 90 minutes
Tools used:
- Ratsche mit Inbus H4
- Tuch zum Reinigen
- Scissors for cutting butyl tape
- Tuch zum Reinigen
Material used:
– Butyl tape / cord from Amazon Link see below.
Prerequisites:
When Volkswagen makes the replacement of the seal, the entire rear cabinet must be removed. Since we didn’t want to do this, we figured out a way to do it without removing the cabinet.
1. access to the 3rd brake light
It’s relatively easy to get to the brake light through the rear roof hatch, and it’s also easy to work on. Nevertheless, care must be taken not to suddenly push the hatch open too far with the upper body.
2. loosen ceiling paneling a little
Push ceiling paneling up a bit so you can work. The ceiling lining is only hooked and quite flexible. You can release them from 2 clips and then wonderfully put through the thick sausage fingers and hands.
I put a small flashlight between the back cabinet and the ceiling trim, so I always had enough light.
It will look something like this:
You can see very well the clips with latches (red) and the 2 screws (orange) as well as the cables for camera, power and brake light.
3. loosening the two screws
Now I am not a gazelle and my arms are anything but thin, but with a little skill you get the hand inkl. Arm in the gap between the cabinet and ceiling paneling.
You can loosen the screws quite easily with an Allen bit H4.
Note 1: Of course, I didn’t put on any gloves and quite quickly had all this GRP crap on my hands. Itches a little. If you are sensitive, better put on some gloves.
Note 2: I pushed a towel through to the very back (not visible in this photo because I took the photo first) to close the rear gap because I was afraid that a screw would fall off and then get lost in the depths of the Cali. You should do the same.
4. unhook latching lugs
If the screws are now off, then you only have to loosen 8 detents. We did this with a screwdriver. Simply press against the metal clip and the whole thing comes off. It is not necessary to loosen 8 detents. 6 did it for us too, after that the whole thing was loose enough.
The 4 front detents go quite easily. Press the screwdriver against them and they pop open. The 4 rear ones require some dexterity and a thinner arm. My wife had that one. She put the arm all the way into the gap between the cabinet and the ceiling trim and was able to release the detents (at the back) by pulling forward. This took a while and was a bit of fiddling, but it works out.
5. Lift off 3rd brake light
Now press lightly against it from below and the whole unit comes off the roof easily.
I would like to say right away that I did not have to use the red wedges in the picture. That was my idea in the beginning, to be able to solve the unit. But was not needed.
6. disconnect the cable from the brake light unit.
In total, only 3 cables need to be disconnected. I always wonder why all 3 cables have different plugs. But anyway…
Goes quite easy to separate. Also does not require a tool.
I have marked the 3 connectors in red.
Afterwards I fixed the free cables a bit, because I was afraid that they might slip into the depths of the Cali and I would never be able to reach them again.
7. clean the installation trough
I used a cleaner to clean the entire recess after disassembling the brake light unit. In any case, you can see that water and dirt has already penetrated into the crack and collects there. The vehicle is just 1 month old.
The rest directly under the brake light was still dry, but we are sure that at some point the problem of water ingress would have hit us as well.
8. remove foam rubber
Note: We decided to remove the original Volkswagen foam rubber. It honestly still looked quite ok (wow…after 1 month!), but since yes the foam rubber is the real culprit of all the chaos and water ingress, I asked around again in Caliboard.de. I was advised to remove this foam rubber, because sooner or later it will dissolve anyway and then no matter how, we will have a leak again.
So away with the trash. Volkswagen is welcome to have it again.
9. bond butyl tape
We have read (also via the Caliboard) that Volkswagen’s TPI supposedly states that a butyl tape should be taped over the foam rubber gasket.
So we ordered the following butyl tape:
Seems to have good properties, especially important for us was the information “…Temperature resistance: -40°C to +90°C…”
We roughly cut the length from the roll and then glued it to the zig-zag pattern of the unit. Lightly pressed, not too tight. Then nicely laid around the curves and once all around.
In the curves, we again cut off small pieces and padded the curves. So just for safety, because we thought that the radius of the curve could somehow create gaps if necessary. No idea if that would have really happened, but now we are sure.
The butyl tape is easy to process. Super cut to length and especially if you leave the tape on the tape also stick cleanly and then just pull off the tape and good.
10. optional: seal cutouts on the GRP roof
No idea if this is really necessary. Maybe not, but “double is better”, right? Once that brake light unit is gone, we might as well “lay” some extra butyl tape sausages.
All recesses for the brackets and the screws are minimally raised. However, should water ever flow there, it certainly won’t really hold. So we put a few more “butyl sausages” around the recesses and glued them in place.
11. screwing
Then carefully put the brake light unit back on, push the clips through the holes and screw everything together again from below. Goes easy.
When you reconnect the cables, check that you also have a picture on the screen again before installing the unit completely. Once the whole thing sticks, it sticks. And do it right.
This tutorial was provided to us by Sascha.