New here. Wind noise?!!

[SRGTD]

Veteran, my comments about rain channels was aimed at indicating that some cars do have water management measures built in and some of them also reduce wind noise, which is the real topic of this thread, in a world where all or nearly all new cars don't have any roof edge guttering, water will always end up flowing into the car, when you open a door, or open a window while water is present on the roof area of the car, any water management measures will at best only work when the car is parked on level ground. It is just lack of thought or lack of rain where car body designer live?

Agree - lack of roof edge rain guttering isn’t specific to the 6r / 6c Polo. Pretty much no other cars - VW’s model range or cars produced by any other manufacturer - have these nowadays. I think the last car I had with roof edge rain guttering was a Vauxhall Nova GTE back in the early 1990’s.

I’m assuming there are aerodynamic gains by not having these, and car designers will place more importance on aerodynamics and reduced drag than water rolling off the roof into the car through an open window.

[veteran]

I'm shocked that some of you appear to be supporting the car manufacturers in the omission of adequate means to control water coming off the roof. IMHO, vehicles must therefore be failing to meet one of the basic requirements, namely to keep the driver and passengers dry. One could argue that all vehicles without adequate means for this are 'unfit for purpose', under the Sale of Goods Act. It's absurd because whilst manufacturers will seemingly go to no end of trouble and expense to incorporate AC into a vehicle, yet they'll not spend relative pennies on a simple piece of guttering. And, in a sense, it lets the cat out of the bag in that car manufacturers are nowadays very much reactive in their approach to design, them following just what everyone else does rather than bucking the trend. Of course, what hasn't helped is their obsession with fuel economy figures.

If you haven't experienced the displeasure of a sudden lapful of dirty water, then it'll only be a matter of time before it happens, and when it does, any previous notions about basic good design and VW's view of that will instantly evaporate. (I nearly said ' .. will go out of the window').

Anyway, rant over, and back to Sparky's original query. As has been pointed out by RUM4MO as well, there could well be significant noise in the driver's position resulting from even a small air leakage between the door seal and the door frame, espacially at speed. I guess that can happen through repeated compression of those seals, each time the door's closed. It'll be interesting to find whether shifting one or both rubbers slightly, as suggested by RUM4MO, will do the trick for Sparky.

I seem to recall that in this last year or so there have been a number of reports in these forums of poor sealing of the front doors with the threshold, ie. where the bottoms of the doors meet the cills, and consequently of water getting into the cabin. It kinda suggests that the door seals, as fitted, aren't really up to the job, in that some of them don't retain their original compliance very well.

[RUM4MO]

Veteran, I could be completely wrong here, but water getting in at the lower end of the doors, with all small VW Group cars, is normally due to a seal failure on the door frame where the window regulator assembly fixes to the door frame - a 100% good water seal there is needed to stop the water that runs down into the doors, running out into the car - instead of gathering in the base of the doors and running out through poorly located drain holes if/when the doors are opened and the car is on the correct slope.

So far so good for me at least having owned VW Polos from new since 2002 - but others have had a terrible time with damp inside their cars until being enlightened to what the possible, or maybe even probably source of that water was.

[Sparkysmum]

RUM4MO, dare I say it...but I'm 99% sure that your suggestion has worked!

I pressed the door seal into the door frame with the drivers side window open, then drove 15-20 minutes on the A1 at 60-70 mph (both yesterday and the day before ) and sure it has made a positive difference, plus it has been pretty windy/blowy these last 2 days which is obviously more noticeable on the open road.

Here's the thing - I'd say the difference was that the rushing wind noise which always seemed to be at my RIGHT EAR definitely seemed reduced. There obviously was wind noise - but the usual outside noise of a windy day.

Hubby doesn't drive so I'm not sure about the passenger side but I'm going to do the same thing with that side.

I think its terrible for a car to be like this and if this continues to be a solution, I may go back to the dealership to explain this and see what they say.

THANKS RUM4MO -

[RUM4MO]

I should really try to work out what to do to stop this happening!

Edit:- I might try applying some suitable lub to the door seals and see what that does for this noise.