How to keep a sunroof from leaking?

Mark, I took the time yesterday to stop by a Lincoln dealer and check out the sunroof design. It IS, in fact, basically the same as the Scion tC. Water runoff does drain via open gutters. I was impressed.

I have owned 4 vehicles with factory sunroofs; 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2012. Three I still own (the 2004 was wrecked in 2012). All have been parked outside for their entire existence. None have ever leaked.

I don’t see how vegetation gets inside of anything. The glass fits up tight against a gasket. Anything that falls on the closed window just blows off the car.

I also do not see how it has any impact on headroom. The entire assembly is flush with the inner headliner.

These are Toyota, Honda and GM vehicles so it’s not like they are unique to one mfr. So I’m curious, who makes one that protrudes into the headspace?

@TwinTurbo, the headliner on a car with a sunroof usually sits lower than the headliner on a car without a sunroof. Trust me, sit in a car that doesn’t have a sunroof, and then sit in the same model with a motorized sunroof and you will see the difference. The sunroof, its machinery, and the door that slides closed to keep the sun out make the whole thing thicker than the piece of sheet metal that makes up the roof. Most sunroof designs lead to a loss of headroom, and I can personally attest that this is a fact in the Ford Fusion. With a sunroof, I have to lower the driver’s seat so my head doesn’t bump against the headliner. Without a sunroof, I have extra headroom to spare in that car.

The roof still works in my 84 Mercedes and it has never leaked. I think the key is not to park under trees. Tree debris gets into the sunroof drains and clogs them up.

“I don’t see how vegetation gets inside of anything. The glass fits up tight against a gasket. Anything that falls on the closed window just blows off the car.”

I believe that when drainage problems occur, it is almost always because the car owner left his/her sunroof open while the vehicle was parked under trees–on multiple occasions. That scenario certainly fits me and my '74 Volvo, which was the only sunroof-equipped car of mine that ever developed clogged sunroof drains. After that experience, I wised-up…

On all of my subsequent cars with a sunroof, I have been very careful about closing the sunroof when the vehicle is parked, and–voila–none of those subsequent cars ever had a sunroof leakage problem.

Did you get them to open and close it mtbike? It’s a bit of a show.

I didn’t. They had one opened in the showroom, and that gave me a chance to examine the drainage. Not having an interest in the car other than from a roof drainage design standpoint, I felt it would be unfair of me to take the guy’s time for a demo. I did notice that it has a popup wind deflector that’s sort of like a miniature Model T Roadster roof, with frames and fabric, that rises when the roof opens and gets pushed down when it closes. And I did notice that the roof panel makes the rear window useless when the roof is open, but I didn’t see it operate.

On some cars the rear headroom is unaffected because the sunroof isn’t very big and the pocket it slides into ends orwatd of the rear passengers’ heads. If you sit in back it’s very obvious where the headliner drops down ahead of you. The other headroom problem is to the sides in the front seat. That is what bother’s me most. If they made the sunroofs wider, as they sometimes used to, it would be less troublesome.

Many newer vehicles, especially SUVs and some luxury cars, have a totally different design where the sunroof pops up and slides back on tracks. These are typically ‘panoramic’ sunroofs with a separate fixed panel behind the sliding one. The pop-up sunroofs can also reduce headroom to the sides as that’s where the channels are located that the sunroof mechanism rides in. The channel generally has a slit rubber seal to keep leaves and such out.

The Lincoln MkZ optional panoramic sunroof uses an extreme version of this concept. Most of the roof is a single large pane of glass. It pops up and slides back so that the back part (maybe a third) is clear of the roof. The roof and rear window have a pronounced arc and the open sunroof curves down at the back and covers part of the rear window. Good thing it’s glass so you can see through it.

Someone else, I think Mercedes, has an interesting panoramic design. The large sunroof is made up of a series of louver-like panels running across the roof. When open they all tip up to almost vertical and stack up at the back of the opening. It looks like it’s just asking for leaks or a jammed mechanism, not to mention wind noise, but it looks cool and gives a huge opening.

Didn’t Pontiac try a louvered roof design on their G8 cars?

If they did I never saw it, mtbike. Then again, I hardly ever even saw a G8. Not a big seller, especially around here, where larger cars are rare. It was either MB or VW that I was thinking of. Kind of a neat design, but I’m not sure I would have trusted it. So many places to leak or jam.

I seem to recall the G8’s having roof whistle problems with their louvered sunroofs. I’m relying solely on my memory, however, so I may be wrong.

I checked out pictures of the G8, mtbike, and it seemed to have a conventional single-panel sunroof. Google found me a couple of nice pictures of what I was seeking, but they were closeups without anything to identify the car. Except that it was a car, not an SUV. Another picture’s URL suggested it was a VW product, but all I really learned is that it has four panels.

I must have been thinking of a different vehicle.
I tried Googling to find out what it was, but was unsuccessful in finding it.

It’s bugging me. Such a beautiful closeup of the sunroof was right at the top of the images, but no way to identify it. I’m almost positive it’s German, or maybe Swedish, but I can’t find it. I saw it a couple of years ago at an auto show, so it may not even be available now.