Aygo MK1 5 Door - Rear Passenger Window Leaks

[RantyAnt]

Like most 5 door MK1 CityBug owners, I had the recall carried out on my rear passenger windows a few years ago. This lengthy post shows what I have discovered from Toyota about the fix of the recall, and also a cheap bodge that I have found for a leak that has developed in the corner of the window. Some other owners on a Facebook group have commented on my post suggesting that they have been having the same problem since the recall!

TL;DR: The window leak may be solved with some cheap adhesive rubber seals from eBay.

I discovered a leak in the window of my NS rear passenger window, in the lower front corner. I am very confident that this is not caused by condensation and that it is a result of the window seal itself as I already tried fitting the X8R seals to help out the OEM door seals, plus I already changed the seals on the rear tailgate, rear lights, rear bumper vents and top level brake light last year resolving a boot leak. A couple of weeks later, I discovered that I was also getting this on the OS window.

After some investigation, I found that if I opened the NS window and pulled on the corner, the lower half of the bracket would come away from the window, leaving an air gap. This means that despite the fix from the recall, the glue had come away between the window and the bracket, which would explain why there was reduced sealing pressure in the leaking corner. Note that I wasn't able to pull the window away from the bracket in the OS window.

I took the car to the Toyota dealership where the recall repair was carried out, and they didn't seem bothered by the air gap. They explained that the fix involved applying adhesive foam between the window and the door, on the front side in between the two brackets, which meant that the window was now forever attached to the door. You can see this if you open the front door (apologies, I don't have a picture). The flex in the foam keeps the window and door bonded when the window hinges from opening and closing. Their suggestion was to change the actual window seals, though they would be approximately £80 per side in part costs, and I wasn't even sure if this was a guaranteed fix due to the air gap that I had found.

 

After noticing that there was a nice consistent "land" around the OEM window seal that didn't have any inconvenient stamp features, I took some rough measurements. On eBay, I was able to find some adhesive D-shaped rubber seal (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/363116572143), which was 4m of 10mm wide by 9mm tall. I actually needed a little under 2m per side so this was the perfect length in the end, and it cost me a grand total of £4.99 delivered. Below is a screenshot of the dimensions in the advert for the sake of documentation when the eBay listing inevitably gets removed. At the time of writing, the size that I mentioned is actually out of stock, but it should give people an idea of what to look for.

By opening the window fully and removing the OEM seal from the door, you can just about get the eBay seal in between the window and door. Don't forget to clean down with some isopropyl alcohol or similar first! I've crudely drawn the eBay seal path in orange below, and gave it a disconnect at the leaking corner to allow for any drainage, if it needed to for whatever reason. I know that it doesn't help to seal that corner, but the purpose was to keep water away from the corner of the OEM seal and I didn't want to take too much sealing pressure away from the OEM seal at that location. It also relies on gravity to prevent water from getting up to the OEM seal past the gap in the eBay seal.

With the dimensions of the eBay seal that I chose, the seal is compressed between the window and the door, which gives me a warm relieving feeling inside. It didn't make any noticeable change to how difficult it is to close the window either.

This bodge has now been driven through two yellow warnings of rain and some minor flooding in my area, and I haven't seen this leak appear again. Unfortunately, it didn't prevent one of the TV springs in my clutch from failing!

It is worth noting that I never have rear passengers so I don't know how this holds up to constant opening and closing of the windows. I also can't speak to the longevity of this bodge, especially with the adhesive on cheap eBay seals, but perhaps any readers can use this as a template with a higher quality product, or make some changes to any weaknesses.

For anyone who wants to start supplying these as a fix kit, please feel free.

[Devon Aygo]

The foam applied does nothing more than retain a bead on windscreen adhesive in place when applied, the recall glues the glass with a flexible adhesive: