Why is there black water leaking onto me...?

The roof of my miata was leaking. I had known this was a possibility when I bought the car, and during last week's heavy rains it happened.

Some backstory: the previous owner had to abandon the car on the side of the road last winter during one of the seattle's heaviest snow storms in decades. During that time, someone had cut into the softtop in 4 places to steal whatever was in the car. The previous owner had repaired the cuts by sewing them shut for mechanical integrity and then taping over them on the inside for watertightness.

At first it was a very small leak mostly contained by the tape, but I foolishly began feeling around the slight water-laden bulge in the tape which caused the water to break through the rest of the glue and then I was getting leaked on by a few drops a minute. The weatherseal would have to be re-done and I was glad to do it properly this time. I spent some time on the Miata.net forums looking up suggestions and results of other people's attempts to repair similar soft-top damage. What I ended up going with was the following:


The permatex black rubber sealant was only about $2 and would form the weathertight seal in the vinyl soft top. The Gorilla Tape was $12 and would help with mechanical stability as well as reduce the stress on the rubber sealant by keeping it solidly in place, since the sealant was not also an adhesive. As a slightly added bonus, the Gorilla Tape also looked a bit better on the inside of the roof than black rubber sealant smeared over a sewn-up cut, so that was nice too. Here's a picture of the inside of the cut after I had removed the previous black tape weatherseal and let the area dry out:


Here's a shot after the second application of black rubber sealant (I forgot to do the small cut in the bottom left the first time because of the dark and didn't notice it until I came back inside and saw the pictures on my computer monitor).


I simply squeezed some black rubber sealant onto my finger and smeared it up onto the Vinyl. Sophisticated and advanced, I know. I suppose a dinner knife would've helped here but my fingers were more readily available. For the third and final application, I did it in the daytime, and made sure all areas of the cut were sufficiently covered, including the hard-to-reach area underneath the metal support bar at the bottom of the picture. Here's a shot after the final application, with the soft-top half-up:


I then let the sealant cure for its full 24 hours before going over it with the Gorilla Tape, and the finished product looked like this!


I haven't had a chance to test it out yet, since its been sunny and warm since I made the repair, but I think it should hold. This covered two of the 4 cuts that were made in the roof, and if this one seems to be holding fine I'll redo the other two cuts in the same manner when the weather gets warm again. The other two cuts are on the vertical side part of the roof, so there's no significant danger of a leak from those in the meantime.