Question for those who've dropped your headliner (1 Viewer)

[iptman]

Did the tray corners around your sun roof drains look like this? I had a tree fall on my roof at the A pillar a while back and I want to see if maybe the body shop cracked the corners when removing the sun roof pan and just glued them back together instead of replacing the pan. My back PS drain leaks like crazy so I dropped the headliner tonight to figure it out.

 

[Malleus]

That's exactly what mine looked like. It made me think the quality control on the injection mold sucked and somebody went to town with a file to clean it up.

 

[iptman]

Whew, ok thanks. I guess the rear drain hoses are just really clogged up.

 

[Malleus]

Be careful when you clean them. Those are metric hoses and they fit tightly (dimensionally) on the nipples, which tend to be brittle this time in their lives. I've had the best luck pulling the hoses off, since I had the headliner down anyway, and flushing them individually.

One of mine was disconnected due to a high pressure air clean out (not my idea). Some folks recommend using a length of string trimmer line. For me, given the mess this thing makes when it doesn't work, I would only consider it clean when I ran water through it and observed it flowing cleaning out the discharge end.

The rear hoses exit outside the body, so there's no problem running them clean with a good hose. The front hoses are a different matter entirely. If you decide to run water through them to clean them, do so very carefully. They do not exit outside the body, instead they are designed to fill up, at least, two body panels BEFORE the discharge. This is my one and only pet peeve about this truck, one I'm in the process of eliminating permanently.
Sunrooof front drain well, with tubing
Sunroof front drain well, without drain tubing

 

[iptman]

I ended up disconnecting the hoses and snaking them with a copper wire I pulled out of some romex. I coiled the end and put a patch of an old tee shirt on the end and pushed it through. I can't believe how much gunk was built up in there. I then sprayed degreaser in the tray channels, wiped them down the best I could and ran a gallon of boiling water down each of the 4 drains. The water moves pretty freely now. Hopefully I won't have to do this for another 20 years.