[QUOTE] I've been told that tailgate leaks on this vintage car and model are not just common but chronic. I discovered this leak when the gate's interior finish panel rotted out around the bottom. Volvo does not make replacement panel's for this car anymore and I could not find one locally in Seattle that wasn't water damaged. I also couldn't find one online without water damage, including two Volvo specific sites in Arizona where one would imagine water damage wouldn't be an issue. I'm thinking design flaw. Anyway, I bought one locally with water damage that will have to suffice but I'm concerned about further water leakage into the interior of the tailgate destroying this one, too. The window seal leaked for sure and I had it removed and reseated. Continued leakage turned out to be in from the aging seals for the license plate lights, the latch handle and the key lock cylinder. I will replace these soon and this should stop all or most of the inflow...for now. The problem is when, unbeknownst to me, leaks form again (Actually, there is no seal provision where the handle's thumb latch passes through the gate's exterior wall, but this is under the cover of the top of the handle...not reliable leak prevention). While the drain holes at the bottom inside of the gate are situated to take care of any water that does get into the door's interior, the design flaw seems to be that they are situated too high to prevent a small well forming above the pinch welds at bottom of the tailgate which, for a car parked on an incline like mine must be, even unobstructed drain holes will not vacate. The water sits in the well until the gate is opened when most of it quickly flows past the drain holes down onto the fiberboard of the finish panel. Factory sealing at the pinch weld is a thin coating of stuff that has an orangish color. Covering this orange coating seems to be the remainder of a black caulking that has eroded badly from most of the seam. I'm thinking of cleaning the area at the pinch weld off and building up an counter-inclined floor of caulking whose bottom terminates slightly above the bottom of the drain holes thus forcing water drainage even for a car parked on an incline. Any problems with this solution that I have not anticipated? Any recommendations for the correct caulking? Any other ideas of how to cure this model's chronic tailgate leakage?[/QUOTE] I haven't heard of chronic leakage, we've got a couple wagons in the family and neither of them leak. You may have rust around the window under the rubber though, I hear water can sit in there. If you have a window installed for a '93 it sits flush and fixes that.
