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I am also a fan of 303, but agree you have a leak problem. Keep in mind you are seeing where the leak ended up, not necessarily where it came in.
You should check all the edges where the top seals, including the window seals. Liquids love to come in at one spot and then run along a path before they finally drip down from another place. Make sure all seals are not torn, still pliable and clean.
Blindside, thank you for the offer, I may well take you up on that. All too often I miss the obvious, and that may be the case here.
To be clear (clearer), my top is waterproof---the inner rubber/waterproof lining is doing its job and seems fully intact. Rain does not leak through. My cockpit stays bone dry in the heaviest downpours. No issues there.
The problem I have is rain *does* intrude at-or-near the back glass window, or where the top attaches to the body (although not indicated), or elsewhere in the vicinity, and, in a pathway that I can't decipher, works its way in quantity to the depressions under the back seat cushion. The internal metal shell of the car is not nearly as rustproofed as the outer shell, and the rust this leak is causing is beginning to worry me at night.
What I was thinking was that the canvas outer shell and the inner rubber shell may not be physically bonded; if so, water soaking through the canvas would be stopped at the rubber barrier, which might actually channel quantities of water *between* the canvas and rubber layers and be overwhelming the seal of the rear window. Something to that effect.
My hope was that adding the missing water repellency to the canvas top might reduce, or end, the water intrusion--that heavy rain would stay outside the canvas barrier, instead of being directed to and challenging the inside of the rear window seal.
Unfortunately, the 303 Fabric Guard and cleaner only repelled $24 from my wallet. Because of 303's failure to repel any significant rain, I'm still left wondering: is water passing through the canvas the problem? Could replacing the rear window seal alone fix this leak? Outwardly, it appears in pristine condition. Is it hard to replace the seal without replacing the entire top (which strikes me as hopefully unnecessary)?
The included diagram might help explain my train of thinking (it that's possible).
As others have said, the 303 product is performing its intended waterproofing function (assuming you applied it correctly and thoroughly). It is likely that you have water intrusion at a seal or a seam. Granted, that can be a very difficult and time-consuming issue to pinpoint....
if I understand your reasoning - and your very illustrative diagram - correctly, I would expect the lower part of the headliner fabric (under the rear window) and/or the parcel shelf to be showing signs of water ingress, no? At least if the seal were being *thoroughly* overwhelmed.
As for the back seat passenger, I think I would be pulling a sad face too. Cramped *and* possibly with a wet bottom Great diagram
Gus:
I too have seen the parts diagram that indicates drain lines on each side of the top, but I haven't been able to locate them, and suspect that, as I had read elsewhere in the Jaguar forum, it *appears* that rain simply runs down the sides of the top, and what does not run down the outside of the car drips into the fender and out of drain holes in the bottom of the fender. If anyone knows the exact whereabouts of the drain lines for the convertible top, please pass along the information (pictures would be grand) and I'll second my efforts to locate them. Until then, I don't believe that my 2000 has them. Clogged drain lines were the first thing that occured to me, having owned a Miata a few years ago. If they exist, I'd live to find them.
JagNoir:
The lower half of the headliner does indeed show water stains. At some time (or times) in the past, it has been wet. However, the parcel shelf (that is visible after removing the fiber liner that covers it) stays dry even as the floorpan under the back seat slowly fills with water. There are no tale-tale rust stains on the visible parcel shelf, and the overlay also shows no evidence of ever having been wet. This is what really throws me.
With the parcel shelf liner removed, the area where the top is bolted to the body sheetmetal is also visible (but not the attachment points at the sides); during heavy rains there is no water leaking from the convertible top attachment point (just forward of the trunk/boot).
I couldn't pass the opportunity to show realistically a figure in the back seat. My God that looks very uncomfortable. I think it's pretty accurate...
I recently visited the local Jag dealer here in Thames Ditton where they tells me it actually failed the MOT test in 2010, so that was 4 years of growth on that hood. And I'll bet it was probably never cleaned by the PO either... so maybe a few more than that... Yuk...
The vast majority of reviews for 303 fabric guard show extreme pleasure with the results given, with a small minority saying it had failed completely. My experience with it was, like the minority, a failure. It just didn't work at all. And yes, I read the instructions a few times, and also watched the videos online. No, it just didn't work.
How could this be so? I actually began to wonder if some people had gotten counterfeit 303; the reviews were day-and-night opposites. So I decided to try it again, and ordered 303 Fabric Guard online from Ace Hardware, and picked it up from my local Ace a few days later (my previous purchase was from Amazon). Applied (again, per instructions), and waited for the next heavy rain--four days later.
The rain this morning lasted about two hours or better, and was constant and often torrential. (It also had one of the most energetic lightning displays I've ever seen, probably averaging 3 lightning flashes per second, for an extended period of time. Scary and spectacular!)
This time, the result was what I had hoped for. It worked, and repelled water very well, where it did not work at all with my first try. Especially worth note, it almost completely stopped water from accumulating under the back seat! This is what I had hoped for all along. There was absolutely no water on the driver side, and only slight dampness on the passenger side. I would have normally expected to see water about an inch deep on each side after a storm like this, so this answers my question finally. A water-repellant canvas shell is necessary to help keep water out of the interior of the car, even with an intact rubber lining; at least in my case.
Great news! I don't think I want to know if mine is leaking or not, and have no idea how to remove the back seat if I did. As an f.y.i., there's a great auto accessory store in our area that stocks both 303 as well as RaggTopp. The Drivers Seat on Okeechobee. 'Been going there for years; worth a visit even if you don't need anything.
Last edited by MediaBobNY; 02-17-2016 at 10:39 AM.
Thanks MediaBob! I never would have known about The Driver's Seat if you hadn't mentioned it; I'll check it out this weekend. The 303 fabric guard is difficult to source locally, so that is good information, as I intend to re-treat the canvas top soon to see if I can completely stop the water intrusion (it is nearly stopped now, perhaps only 1% - 3% of what is was before).
If a second treatment of 303 doesn't stop the water 100% completely, then I'm going to look into replacing or otherwise sealing the grommet around the back glass.
Thanks again for the heads-up on The Driver's Seat. (Hey! Here's something I've not seen before--I looked it up on Google Maps, and using Street View, I was actually able to GO INSIDE the store! That is so so cool!)
...Oh, and something of a tangent occurrence that I wanted to mention here; when I applied the 303 fabric guard to the canvas top, some overspray got onto the back window, and I neglected to wipe it off promptly. Since I had used Rain-X on all of my windows, I didn't think too much of it.
Fast-forward a few days, and the cloudiness that the 303 spray on the back window had caused was beginning to annoy me so I grabbed the Windex and tried to clean the glass--no good. The Windex didn't have any effect, and I could actually feel some roughness to the glass, and began to worry that an odd chemical combination of 303 and Rain-X might have actually etched the surface.
My stalwart glass cleaner is acetone (I use it at work, applied to "fuzzy toothpicks", to clean the thin-film glass over tiny CCD wafers, and at home to clean my DSLR lenses), so I applied acetone to a paper towel and found that it removed the cloudy film beautifully (but now I need to (re)Rain-X the back glass).
Acetone is a fantastic glass cleaner and leaves no residue, but be careful not to get it onto painted surfaces.
02-07-2016, 11:03 AM
Great diagram 
