57 minutes ago, reekygiant said:

Thanks for the tip Hatcho. Yes, I am parked facing down a slope. However, I have tried once to park the other way to no avail. Will do another test though.

I have yet to tear out the lining and have a closer look at the drains, but I have done a water bottle drain test. The water flushed through seemingly unhindered to the evacuation point. I'm worried that I might break fasteners while removing the inner roof. Any tips?

Before I go ahead and rip anything out, I will probably do two tests: 1- duct tape the sunroof as a temporary measure to see if its there the water enter 2- duct tape the bottom part of the windshield

I used a garden hose at home to try and reproduce the leak to no avail when the car was level.  No amount of water would result in a flow into either of the front footwells.  I think when the car is level, only some of the applied water ends up going through the front drains and they are able to cope.  Plus, the rear drains are also doing their job and so there's less water attempting to flow down the front drains.  It's when you point the car downhill that the front drains aren't able to drain away the water as the same rate it's filling up the sunroof frame.  This results in puddling in the frame area, and if it has hairline cracks (like mine reportedly does) then you're going to have leakage into the area behind the roof liner.  So, even when the drains are clear and working, its a case of limited flow capacity (coupled with hairline cracks in the sunroof frame) that leads to the ingress.

 

I didn't go near the inner roof at all, so can't really offer any tips there.  My dealer informed me that it has a waxy (and waterproof) fire retardant finish on the roof side. That's why the roof liner didn't have damp stains and why the water was first appearing in the footwells after it had trickled down the passenger side A pillar.  What I did do was pull up the carpet and all soundproofing material in the passenger footwell to allow it to dry out.  Even in the midsummer heat this took several days as the soundproofing layer is especially absorbent and difficult to dry out.  Plus I had to drive around with no front passenger seat with the passenger side carpet pulled up as high as the top of the dash.  I put down a layer of plastic sheeting before resitting everything to ensure that any further ingress would flow under the plastic and prevent the carpet and soundproofing layer from getting wet.  Not the most elegant solution, but with Skoda refusing to replace the sunroof frame, it was the only option.

 

I have heard that other vehicles (VW and Audi) also use the same panoramic sunroof from the same supplier and have also experience leakage issues.  Didn't help much with my request to Skoda to sort it outside of the warranty period.

 

 

I also suffered from a wet passenger footwell - local dealer fobbed me off with a tale of heavy rain overloading the blower inlet below the windscreen - £35 later for a modification there was no improvement.

 

Some investigation late I found the source of the water was a blocked a/c condensate drain.  Water backing up from the drain, into a very wet pollen filter and then down onto the carpet.  The drain pipe is on the side of the transmission tunnel on the drivers side (RHS).  By removing the trim from the side of the transmission tunnel, puling up the carpet i found the rubber drain pipe was twisted and blocked.  Removed it, popped it into some hot water and it returned to its original shape quite well.  Since then its been fine.