I'll bet no one has brought up this point. Seeing that the overall body is aluminum, does anyone see a problem by drilling maybe one or two 1/4 inch holes in the front and back seat foot areas? It seems that a lot of us have had water accumulate due to blocked sunroof drains mostly among other reasons. When I went to lift the floor carpeting in the back seat, I was amazed how much water was being retained in the 1 inch foam carpet underlay. Yes, I have resolved the drain issue but one never knows when another door gasket or accidental window being left open may allow another 'duck pond' again.
Any thoughts folks?

 

But if you accidentally drive off a wharf, you might sink.
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Fix the cause. You will reasonably have to fix the cause anyway.
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At least you could put a stick through the hole in case your brakes fail /s

 

YES:

1. water will not drain from the underlay by gravity alone therefore small diameter holes will have negligible result
2. rain water will enter through the holes whilst driving - that's why underbody seams are sealed during manufacture

As suggested, fix the cause rather than effect.

Graham

 

Put another way - if the water can drain out liquids can also enter in. Worse yet - what can get in may not be as clean as the rain.

 

Worse than you think because of surface tension of the water (mimises overall energy of the system water/solid) and minimal evaporation flow (because of no available free surface under the carpets).
Water can get in but will not get out: it remains trapped within the foam of the carpets!

 

roll the windows down about an inch each and get the inside of the car really hot, either by having the heating on full, or some form of heater inside the car, but you would have to be careful with that approach, don't want to melt or set fire to anything, the water will evaporate and escape through the windows, might take a considerable time, depending on how much water there is, but it will eventually dry out, IF the root cause of the water ingress is fixed. Other option is to remove the seats, centre console etc, remove the carpets and foam and dry them out of the car, also dry the floor. I know from experience that the foam under car carpets, when watelogged, can increase in weight by about 10 fold, that stuff really does retain water.

 

My X350 does not have a sunroof, but when I had another Ford product: a 2007 Volvo V50 with a sunroof, I got in after a deluge to find the footwells full of water. The drain system had four links terminating behind the dashboard - a prescription for disaster as it had numerous places where debris could collect and the final exit point was too small for my hands.

So I went to Bunnings (similar to Home Depot in the US and Homebase in UK) and bought 10mm clear flexible plastic pipe that was the same inner diameter as the Volvo pipes (I posted the process on Volvo forums). I hooked one end to the sunroof drain and then ran it down the A pillar. It was completely hidden all the way to the floor. I then drilled a hole equal to the outer diameter of the pipe, painted POR-15 paint on the exposed metal and pushed the pipe through and clipped it off about 15mm from the bottom. I then bought a 15mm screen pipe fitting (see https://pipefittings.co.nz/product/s...-valve-screen/ for an example) and hose-clamped it to the bottom of the hose. This is because in NZ we have mason bees that look for openings to make mud-packed nests. I did both sides of the sunroof. After that the car never had a drop of water inside, and the screen drains make it look professional.

Half a year later, we had some overseas house guests who were on one-year under-30 work visas. They needed a car. On our local auction site, TradeMe, a 2006 Volvo V50 with 120,000 km popped up for sale with the dreaded leaking sunroof - otherwise in perfect condition, but the owner had been given a draconian repair quote by the dealer. They got it for NZ$1,400 (£750). I took them to Bunnings and now that I was an expert, it took 15 minutes and cost then $12 to permanently fix. They were thrilled because they had been looking at 25 year old cars with 300,000 k on them and lots of dents for $2-3000.

I expect Jaguar has the same problem, and "fixing" what was bad engineering promises to be expensive and unreliable. A single pipe with no joints and gravity drawn to exit at the car's lowest point is not in the Jag repair manual, but it works, it takes minutes, it costs next to nothing and it lasts. So yes, do drill the holes, but not to allow water to drain from under the carpet. Fix the problem.

 

Yes, did that too..
I first fixed the water ingress issue.
Then I dried the carpets as far as possible with many dry towels pressed on them.
Then, with open cabin, I used a heat gun gently passing over each place of the carpets for a considerable time.
After several hours it worked

 

Be Proud of your floor pans.
Jaguar finally made something that doesn't leak.