I had a similar leak recently on my 30 year old pickup, after I replaced the center brake light assembly. The original had burned out the brake light bulbs, and the sockets were so corroded I could not get a new bulb to work. Sadly, you cannot buy a replacement anymore that is not an LED fixture, and the cheap Chinese replacement fixture from Amazon didn't seal well. It filled up with rain water (vehicle is parked with the rear down hill) and the headliner got wet as well. I dried it all out, and put some CLEAR silicone on the foam gasket when I put it back together, and no leak so far.

I cannot imagine what you went through to get that sealant off the interior of the truck. The last time I had a windshield leak, the guy who fixed that used black silicone to seal it, and thankfully didn't get it on anything.

Hope you are done going to the dealer for a while!

 

It was pretty unbelievable. Resolve carpet cleaner on the headliner with wet rags, left a big line across the headliner when it dried like when it was getting wet and drying but cleaned it perfectly accept for the line. So I cleaned the whole thing up to a dent in the headliner so you can't see the line now because it is on the natural headliner line, well you can if you really look hard. I plan to just just clean the whole thing at some point though so there is no line anywhere. Microfiber cloth took the silicone residue right off of the paint, window, rear fin thing and then I put some Rain ex spray car cleaner on after I had all the hand prints wiped off and it is all fine. Same on the interior plastic and steering wheel. The steering wheel took a couple cleanings over a few days of driving but my hand stopped sticking to it finally. Man it is making me mad thinking about it again!

You need to look at the junk yards for parts. Sometimes you can find those perfect parts where the vehicles must have lived inside most of their life. Also finding the gasket material to make your own gaskets like with the foam tape or rubber and other materials the manufacturers use. OEM rejuvenated is a million times better than aftermarket most of the time these days especially for items like that.

 

Went on a trip over the weekend and drove in some pretty heavy rain for a couple days. Back of the cab leaked like never before in the same spot so that was awesome! Back to the dealer today.

 

Trip, something to be aware of that I learned over the decades with my GM trucks and SUV's is that cleaning the headliner and allowing it to get saturated accelerates the onset of detachment of the fabric. I'm driving around right now in a 2006 Silverado where I pulled the headliner down as it was dropping on me like a circus tent. My 2003 Yukon did the same thing, and it was worse in areas that had gotten wet due to a couple of instances of going through carwashes without a fully closed sunroof! The fabric detached a few years later from the entire moving sunroof cover, and started detaching around the sunroof.

I would be pushing for the fix to the intrusion obviously, but also pushing for a new headliner from the dealer if you are under warranty still, as all that repeated wetness will lead to the fabric detaching from the backing in that area, sooner than it would have otherwise.

 

Great thinking! So far it is all on me even though to me it is an obvious manufactures defect. Has to be something leaking under that wing assembly that houses the 3rd tail light. I would have taken it off but I guess there are 1 use fasteners of some kind after reading other posts, that you need to purchase before you remove it and re-install it. I tried finding those and they were not easy to find, it was winter, I found the tsb on the leaking rear window, so I just took it in thinking it would be an easy fix. NOT!

 

This time they say the back window seal is bad, whole window assembly needs replaced because the seal is part of the window. They are checking to see if it can be covered for free since they tried to fix it and the fix did not work.

 

Glad to hear you may have a fix for the issue. I hate hearing stuff like this on such a new truck.

We had a lot of rain last week - many inches - and I noticed water inside the cheap Chinese sourced middle brake light assembly on my 1996 pickup, which was parked on a slope with the rear of the cab downhill. I had it backed into the driveway previously, and no water got in when parked with the front of the cab downhill. I'll need to dry it out, and maybe seal with silicone to supplement the foam strip around the edges of the light, or I'll be getting water in the cab like you... I may need to put the original light back in place, as it never leaked - but it had corroded bulb sockets and I couldn't get new brake light bulbs to work in it anymore...

 

The foam seal failed after years in my 87 f150 on the rear bed light. I found some rubber seals in the junk yard that I used from some newer vehicles with the same light, used some silicone on each side. A little water in the cab isn't a big deal on older vehicles, clean it up, most everything is painted and sealed. This stupid pickup has so much electronics on the back of the cab when you take the back seat off it is unreal! Put all that stuff right under something that can leak with no protection. Mine is leaking on the edge but I feel sorry for the guys that have leaks down the middle and water getting on those electronics.

 

The water leak is finally fixed. The dealership got a new rear window assembly and had it installed at an auto glass shop. The next rain it was leaking from the black track on both sides of the window! Went back to the dealer to show them and they sent me directly to the glass shop again. The glass shop determined the window was defective, the track was not installed correctly with sealant. Instead of going through trying to get another one they properly sealed the track assembly to the window and after several rain showers it is no longer leaking. The dealership refunded my money I spent on trying to get it fixed as well as paid for a new Kicker HS10 that the water destroyed. I just need to clean the headliner up one more time and hopefully this is behind me.

 

year and model?