Saturday 16 June 2012

Honda Jazz leaking water

A few days ago I got a call from my wife with unwanted news - the driver's side rear footwell of our car was sodden with water.  The car's 10 years old this year, and other than the usual for a car of it's age, we haven't had any problems with it.

We'd had some heavy rain the day before, but as our daughter normally sits in the back (and the mat is on top of the carpet), nothing was spotted until Jo's mum sat in the back of the car.  A quick press on the surface of the carpet revealed a fair quantity of water would bubble up through it.

Further inspection revealed water in the boot and spare wheel well, but nothing obviously wrong with any seals, etc.  After a couple of hours drying the car out, I covered it over ready for some detective work at the weekend.  A bit of research reveals it's not unknown for Jazzes to ingress water, but some of the solutions really scared me ("start by removing all interior trim...") especially as ours has a sunroof, and that's one possible cause.

So, out comes the watering can and a watering can full of water is poured over the rear of the car, concentrated on the side where the wet footwell was.  Removing the plastic cover inside the boot protecting the rear light cluster quickly revealed a fair amount of the watering can's contents was dripping down inside it. So off I go to Halfords to buy some sealant in the hope that resealing the rear light cluster will fix it. Wish me luck.

Update 1:

After much fiddling (and borrowing an 8mm spanner from a kind neighbour) I've taken the right rear light cluster off and resealed it, and then put it back on again (not forgetting the hidden screw), but then on further inspection (the area round the light cluster looks fine) it may actually be due to a big hulking crack in the roof trim sealant, so I've sealed that as well (without scraping out the old stuff so we'll see what happens when it rains) but hopefully it'll be less leaky than it was before...


A game theoretic approach to the toilet seat problem


Bringing the full weight of maths to bear on the toilet seat...



Consider a bathroom with one omnipurpose toilet (also known as a WC) which is used for two toilet operations which we shall designate as #1 and #2. The toilet has an attachment which we shall refer to as the seat (but see remark 1 below) which may be in either of two positions which we shall designate as up and down.



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