Water leak...into spare tire area etc

Thanks to everyone for this thread.

Water collecting under my 12V battery and under my spare tire was gradually getting worse. My Prius is a 2005 gen 2 with 107k miles. Until I read this thread I had no idea how all that water was getting into the car. At times the spare tire area looked like a swimming pool!

After reading this thread I identified the typical cracks where the rear end of the rain gutter channels meet up with the rear hatch area. In my car there were thin cracks on both driver and passenger side which were about two inches in length.

I got the “flowable silicone sealer” and applied it to the cracks.

There was a very hard rain the next day. I didn’t find any water inside the car at all afterwards.

-Greg

 

I have leak in battery well only. Not real keen on all the effort to try and seal it since it seems to not be huge. I’ve read about pulling the plug, but it is not clear if that is just to drain the water, or if it should be permanently removed. The car is not garage-kept. It’s also maybe going to Ann Arbor soon so maybe face longer stretches of all out cold than it’s used to here in the Delaware Valley. Any advice appreciated.

 

-im assuming you havent found the exact source location of the leak yet- but I guess you can pull the plug and let it continually drain out, but if your gonna do that why not just remove the paneling around the battery and see if you can find the leak (unless the leak is actually from some hole near the battery well). How I did it: Pull the back seats down and after you remove the fabric paneling to expose the interior metal of car, hose the outside of the car around the battery nice and wet and then go back in from the rear doors and look for the leak. I found my leak coming actually from the tail light mounting holes.

 

Hello, I found a leak today, after some rain, in my newly purchased 2009 Prius. Not pooling in the spare tire well, but still noticeable, with trim panels on the driver side soaking wet. I will inspect the roof seams tomorrow. I too have never seen cars leaking like this, maybe its a feature of this body style. Anyway, I wanted to thank everyone for the thread, as I can now get to the puppy who refuses to shit outside and other life problems.

 

Yesterday, after taking the rear bumper cover off my '04, I finally found this "new" leak. This spot was leaking on the passenger side, and clearly "showing signs" on the driver side as well. Sealed both sides. The ones above by the rain gutters were sealed years ago.