Not only are the factory holes in the roof of our Transits notoriously poorly sealed and therefore highly prone to leaking into your beautiful converted van, but there are also bad welds on some Transits. I was one such unlucky person.
So i drove through my first pretty big rainstorm in the van and the product of that is that i found my first leak in the van uh so if you look right here in this little cubby there is a this is where the water was entering real deep in there it looks like an uncompleted weld on the outside i’ll show you so i believe the water is um hitting the roof sliding
Down the back and then entering the small little cavity and then dripping in it wasn’t a ton of water but it definitely was enough to need to be aware of and as you can see there’s actually a little bit of rust that has started to form here in these two spots the good news is that it was not the hole that i opened up one of the factory rifles through which
I’m running my solar wiring as you can see right here so it wasn’t that which made me really glad that it wasn’t my job that is leaking rather it’s ford that is leaking that’s why ford is developing new ways to screw you over with crappy welding jobs i believe it’s just that weld that isn’t right it’s even a little damp right now i think um but i’m going to
Uh wait till it’s not raining dry it out get some a spray bottle or a water bottle or something and then try to find the exact place and run um some sealant over that hole uh let it sit for a couple days test it again in the exact same way and see if i can reproduce the leak there also are uh factory holes all along both sides of the of the van that are almost
Barely sealed at all and can crack and can come loose and then are just direct ports into the van so i’m also when i’m on top gonna do that too and i highly encourage anyone who once you’ve figured out where you’re gonna run your solar wires once you’ve rounded mounted your rack just seal all those extra holes because the factory sealing is almost non-existent
And so if you don’t want water in your van then that’s a good idea another note is that i am using thinsulate so thankfully even though there was a bunch of water in here and the thinsulate got wet the thinsulate is hydrophobic i think maybe that’s the term it doesn’t actually absorb water it repels it so none of my insulation is wet nothing is ruined a little
Bit of rust that i’ll clean up and re-coat with some rust-oleum and then i’ll test that place seal it and we will get this van water tight all right so we sealed up the place where i think water was coming in in the back and next i’m going to go around to all of the factory holes that i’m not going to use and see if i can cover the rest of them with this sealant
As you can see the factory gaskets or holes are actually already cracking and this is a pretty new van so everyone should cover their factory mount holes that they’re not going to use um if you want to keep leaks from happening so the ford transit and probably actually every van every standard type van promaster sprinter all that has factory holes up top
And in order to make sure that you get a tight seal which hopefully no rain will come through you actually need to go back over everything with your own sealant um i think there are a total of six or eight or so there’s a lot of holes um if you don’t use the the standard rack mount holes there’s actually more holes so there’s several holes that are just pure holes
About the size of like a quarter or so but then they’re actually factory mounting holes but all of them are entrances to the van so make sure that you seal them make sure that you at least inspect them uh it would take you ten minutes and five dollars worth of sealant to actually make sure that you seal them all so why not just go ahead and do that so we took care
Of that now and hopefully we’ll be no more water in the pan
Transcribed from video
Dealing with Water Leaks on New Ford Transit Van Conversion By Jeremiah Luke