Over the weekend I adjusted the three rubber seals (drivers side) that screw to the inside of the hood frame, and form a water tight seal around the window. I took the three off and thought it best to move them all to the furthest outward position, that is so the maximum pressure would be placed between the seal and the window. Indeed when I had finished there appeared to be a good amount of pressure on the window/seal.

Last night it rained quite heavily I think, and when I opened my door the first thing I noticed was that my seat was wet. Along the closest bit to the window, it was visibly damp. I had never seen this before from a nights rain, the only thing I used to get was dripping on my arm as you drove along.

Can anyone advise me on the best position for these rubber seals......or is it just a case of trial and error? (1/00)
I've adjusted both my soft -and hardtop the same way, well I didn't take the metal strips off, just loosened them enough so I could slide them all the way out. Car stays perfectly dry. On the US list there was some talk about water leaks at the 'ears' where the water from the front part of the roof is collected and guided down. You could always have someone spray the roof with a garden hose to check where the water is entering the car. (1/00)
The problem I think with older cars is hood shrinkage, exposing more of the seal than previous. Tis seal is hollow, and fills up with water. I've also had water in a strong wind forcing itself by capillary action (once the seal is waterlogged, this is going to happen) through into the car. I'm starting to get used to it, after numerous experiments with repositioning the seals, using silicone greases. The only thing I can think of extra is either inserting a tube into the end of the seal, so water drains away down the channel in the A-post, or gunging up the stainless steel guide for the seal with silicone rubber, neither of which are very appealing. I'm just going to wait until the roof finally gives up (maybe another year or so). Have you checked the seals went back into the channels properly; I found Holts nylon spray was really good at allowing the seals to slide in smoothly. (1/00)
With respect to the hood shrinkage; are the hood cables still intact? These are little suckers which run from a spring on the rear bow to the front of the hood and pull the hood down over the seals. They corrode and snap. The real problem is that the next highest assembly is the hood. Like the door window cables one needs to get them made somewhere. (1/00)
.. well it is written down in the workshop manual .. and my car has both fully in and fully out on respective sides .. so the main bit is find a position that works .. i.e. copy the other side (1/00)
Damn hood has started leaking again, but this time quite a lot. The water is dripping in around halfway down the A-pillar, looks like the water is missing the big hole and channel in the door seal and running inside before it gets to this it then runs down the inside of the door till it drips off. The passenger side is letting in quite a lot and now the drivers side is seeping a bit. This has started since I last had the hood down about a week ago, there doesn't seem that much pressure on the hood seals when I close the clips, but I don't know if that is right. (1/01)

Recently there's been a few people enquiring about a leak on the passenger side door near the small A-frame window (this goes for the drivers side too). Usually resulting in water dripping down the inside of the Windscreen rail and onto the passenger footwell.

Suffering from this problem myself, I managed to investigate and solve the problem last weekend on my Mk1. And since then - no leaky bits! This might be a bit awkward to describe without real pictures, but I'll give it a go for anyone that's interested.

I've seen mention of a few other reasons for this kind of leak, but in my case they didn't fix the problem. My problem involved the rubber seal on the door itself, the one which runs from the top of the small A-shaped window on the door down to the hinges of the door. I.e., all along the front edge of the door.

If you look at the top of this seal from directly above, you'll see that it forms what looks suspiciously like a rain channel. This channel actually meets up with a small drain hole which comes down from the roof rubber seal. If you look, you may see a small (~ 5mm diameter) hole in the roof rubber seal at the top of the Windscreen seal where the door would meet it when closed.

Okay, so what's happening? In my case, this door rubber was meeting with the roof no problem, but the inside edge of the channel was being bent out of shape by the seal on the roof, causing the small drain hole to drain straight inside the door frame instead of down the channel.

The rain channel gets squished on the inside of the roof seal, opening up a gap.' The drain hole from the roof seal is also at the same place which means water just drains inside the car down the edge of the windscreen rail.

Great! I fixed this problem by getting a small length (about 10mm) of rubberised electrical flex (I had it lying around somewhere) which was about 5mm in diameter. I bunged this in the top of the door rubber channel, making sure it wasn't long enough to obscure the small rain hole in the roof seal and made sure it kept the two edges open when I squeezed them.

This prevents the inside lip of the door rubber channel from being squashed into an undesirable position when the door is closed and the water can drip freely down this channel. As I said, I looked at this last weekend, and I've not had any drips appear on the inside of the windscreen rail and hence onto the footwell mat for over a week and we've had some considerable rain! (1/01)
Just been out to the car to claer away the drips inside the car and can see that the water is definitley running down the gap between the hood and the windscreen top which means it is dripping down on to the door just behind the door seal. Is this a job for application of Vasaline or is it safe to tighten the catches? (1/01)

I don't know about the vasaline approach, but if I understand the bit you're describing, you may be better off adjusting the seal on the windscreen.

Personally, I wouldn't tighten the roof catches before trying the "adjust the seals" method. From trying to fix my leak I was concerned that making the catch tighter might restrict the normal water dispersal through the seals and cause a leak somewhere else. (1/01)