I live in the proverbial middle of nowhere, with graded dirt roads for at least 6 miles in every direction. When dry, these become very dusty. When it rains they get muddy and after only a short drive the Jeep is no longer Bright Black but Countryside Flat Beige up to the belt line. I can live with that.
However, just like the two ZJs and the WK I had before, the KL manages to suck up lots of dirt onto the door sills. In rainy weather the sills look like narrow lakes of mud when you open the door. I'm 6'3" with long legs, so I can slide in and out without ruining my pants, but my regular passenger is 5' nothing and she has severe challenges getting into or out of the vehicle and remain presentable for work.
Has anyone here found some way to eliminate, or at least alleviate, this problem?
In theory you could put a line of soft foam stripping/insulation (like for sealing garage door/frame interface) along the very edges of the door to seal the gaps between door and frame - basically add a "pre-seal" to keep dust out from the main seals... not sure how it would work with moisture though. I guess I've just never noticed an 'lakes of mud' on my car. Getting dirty/dusty in there, sure, but nothing I haven't seen in most other cars and esp in SUVs.
I don't have that problem since I don't do any off road driving. But I thought my TH would go through 20" of water so shouldn't that be water proof at the bottom at least? May be a dumb question,
but curious about the dirt getting in there so much. Thanks for informing me on this subject.
Someone said that the door seals are not completely waterproof... from what I remember, they are water resistant (common splash/rain), but if you submerge that area you will have water ingress.
You could look at getting the RRO step rails for your passenger. Then they would have something to step on when getting in and out of the KL. Also, it removes the stock plastic rocker panels where the water/mud sits!
The idea of adding some sort of seal along the bottom edge of the doors has occurred to me, but I don't know if it's feasible in practice.
You don't have to go off-road around here to experience the problem, since there are lots of graded dirt roads (even public roads). I drive at least 20 miles on dirt every day.
The forecast doesn't mention rain any time soon, but I'll snap a picture and post it here the next time this happens.
The dirt doesn't penetrate into the passenger compartment, so fording 20" of water might still be okay.
As I said, I've had the exact same issue with the three Grand Cherokees I've owned. I guess I was nursing some hope that Jeep would have caught on by now.
:smile:
Wish Jeep would copy the setup on my '17 Subaru Outback. Each door has a firm rubber gasket that fits flush against the bottom of the door, keeping dust/dirt/mud out of the door sill. It works quite well as I've been down many dirt roads and construction areas with the Outback.
There's been some rain today, so I snapped a photo to illustrate what I'm talking about. This is after 6 miles on graded dirt roads (going home from work), so we're not exactly talking hardcore off-roading here.
Agree the KL lacks mud protection some other vehicles provide...
Here's my pickup truck which runs the same roads...
The difference is the pickup has a rubber squeegee that presses against the rocker panel when the door closes whereas the KL has a hard plastic trim piece that doesn't keep the mud off the top of the rocker panel...
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