Boot seal replacement (or repair) / possibly cracked welding - water in the boot

Water leakage into the rear hatch area of a Gen 2 Prius is a common problem. Take a look at this linked thread, https://priuschat.com/index.php?posts/826169

 

Yeah you got to look for all those cracks where the hatch sheet metal is overlapped and has that glue in it it's not necessarily all welded that glue or caulking or whatever you want to call it sound deadening material cracks and water runs through It is the jist of the business here. Personally I haven't had this problem or haven't had to find it on a generation 2 Prius as of yet usually use a water hose and you put it on slowly and you run it over certain areas while you or someone's in the car looking for the business another way to do it is you can take the rear hatch seal right off its Mount and hang it up nicely and look for dings cuts and nonsense if you don't see any of that I doubt it's your boot seal that's leaking it's leaking in other places with the boot seal out you need to look under what the boot seal covers and just see if you see any funny business and walk that back on up the panel and see if you can figure out where the water is coming from very common for it to run down the hatch area and get where the 12 volt is and in the winter the water freezes and kills the 12 volt people don't pull the pass through plugs out of the spots in this car where you're supposed to and water just piles up water should be able to come through the vehicle and pass through the vehicle not be stopped by rubber plugs there are strategic rubber plugs throughout the vehicle in the hatch in the battery tray areas for the 12 volt the little tool storage thing under that there's a few on that side usually one takes out the rubber plug that's directly under or below the HV battery but under the spare tire not the one towards the middle of the tire the one towards the outer edge almost up near the big battery this will allow water that enters the area to go out of the area relatively quickly also so then you won't have any standing water when it does get through water will get through somewhere forever generally you may or may not notice it if all the pass-through plugs are remove