Water leaks in driver's side floor area

[Randall Fritz]

After a heavy rainfall, the carpeting on the driver's side of my 318ti gets wet....I don't see any water leaking onto the carpet, but the carpet itself gets damp, near the door. Not real wet, but damp. All this while the car is sitting....not driving through puddles etc.

Any one else experience this ?? Could it be a plugged drain somewhere ?? Leaky weatherseal ??

Thanks for any info.

[1996 328ti]

It's the drain that is clogged.
I think the drain is somewhere along the chassis rails.

Try this, run water on the windshield. You will notice a trickle under the car on the left.
You may not see anything on the right or it might be trickling in the wheel well.
What happens is water fills up in the firewall, starts to overflow into the wheel well, then overflows in the right side onto the floor.

This seems to be pretty common this time of year because of the leaves that get stuck there.

[Randall Fritz]

I'll check that out.

btw - fitting the hatch struts was really straight-forward...thanks so much.