Hi, first time using this forum from my phone I’m having a hard time finding the right section so apologise if it’s in the wrong place. 

I have a mk3 Ford Focus hatchback and I haven’t been in my boot for over 6 months the car started to smell of damp so I checked out the car and my spare wheel was covered by water completely rusted and I’ve had to throw the spare wheel and jack away.

im not sure where the leak is coming from as I’ve dried the boot out and again it’s started letting water back in. I suspected the back lights but I’ve took them off and I don’t think it’s that. The boot seal is also perfectly fine. 

Anyone got any suggestions where I should be checking ? 

 

Thanks is in advance 

Matt

It'll be the rear bumper vents...they all leak eventually on the Mk3s.

Just need to pop the bumper off, remove and re-seal all 4 vents with some waterproof sealant.

Cheers for the advice. I’ve took my back seat out and it’s all under there aswell into the footwell on the passenger side. I’ve had to strip the full car to get the floor lining out. The insulation is full of water and mould so that will need replacing aswell 

1 hour ago, MN22 said:

Cheers for the advice. I’ve took my back seat out and it’s all under there aswell into the footwell on the passenger side. I’ve had to strip the full car to get the floor lining out. The insulation is full of water and mould so that will need replacing aswell 

You can just dry it out, shouldn't need replacing as long as it's fully dry when you put it back.  You'll also find some thick sound deadening in the cavities behind the bumper vents which will need drying out too.

I had the same problem on my 2012 Focus Titanium MK3 last year (water collecting in left side of boot, filling up spare tyre well and eventually getting all the way to carpet under the front LH foot well), since i was able to eliminate the problem and searched through this forum here is what i found:

Taking off the interior boot trim on the left side (while it was raining) i found that the water was dripping from the sheet metal near the rear left brake lights - to find the source of those drops pulling down the ceiling trim and looking on the left side i found that water was coming in where there was a hole in the roof sheet metal (on the LH roof rail channel, this hole was "sealed" by a plug with an elastic clip). Taking off the left side roof rail cover (plastic) i could feel the play in the plug for that hole (the elastic clip wasn't compressing the seal anymore, plug seal not working well). I cleaned the plug, rail channel and hole surface, then silicone-sealed the plug seal (did this for all the roof rail plugs on both LH and RH sides of the vehicle). Then i waited for the next few rainy days to check it worked and it did, no more water ingress (so in the end it wasn't related to water ingress from around the bumper area as i have seen on other forums). A note on drying out the carpet (all the carpet on LH was soaked, you could literally hear squelching when you put your foot on the carpet): i was worried i would have to pull up the carpet to dry it out (worried about mould), in the end i just blazed up the foot well heating on the drive to work every day and after a few weeks the carpet was well dried out, so i was lucky there.

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions. Have few photos too but have some problems uploading on the site here.