Oh boy, what a coincidence! Roger, I think I have a leak in this same area. I can tell you right now, from my experience at least, tracking down a water leak is extremely hard to do.
On some cars you can get your hand up in there to clear the plenum out. Sometimes there is a vent down by the kickpanel, or behind it. If you remove that you can get your hand in there-- or-- what I did was snake a vacuum cleaner hose in there to get out the gunk. (Thinking that years of accumulated debris might be causing the leak somehow.) There are usually drainholes at the very bottom of this area. If you probe around with a screwdriver you can find them and clear them out. Whether this will help you with your leak or not, I don't know. But it's a good idea to do it anyway so you have good flow thru this area and don't have anything in there to trap moisture and cause rust.
I think in my case my leak was actually several leaks. I finally found one of the major ones in the firewall. There was a connector holding a piece of sound deadening insulation in place; directly below that connector was a gap where 2 panels had been welded together. There was some body sealer or whatever you want to call it in this crack, but it was old and there was a hole in it. You could see daylight through it. When I pulled back the carpet I could see a trace of a little wet trail from this hole to the puddle in my floorboard. So I sealed that up.
For 2 rains it was dry as a bone. "Success!" thought I. No, not hardly. The next time it rained, big puddle in floorboard. So then I moved to the next suspect, the weatherstripping, or seal, around the windshield. I just completed resealing that this weekend and it rained like a sunuvagun last night. But no leaks this morning! So . . . maybe success.
I even taped a hose with a spray nozzle on a ladder and tried to simulate rain over this area while I crawled around on my back, looking up under the dash, and I never could find the leak. It can be quite frustrating!
The only thing I can say is, the hole you are looking for may be VERY small. Don't be deceived by the large amount of water in your car into thinking that you have a big leak-- you may not. Confucious say, "Small hole can cause big leak." (I think it was Confucious, it may have been Socrates.) Also, it helped me to try to trace the leak back to its source by pulling up the carpet right after it got wet and looking for the trail. try that.
Good luck and let me know what you found!
Mark M
On Monday, November 24, 2003, at 02:45 PM, Roger Cooper wrote:
Okay guys what do you call the part of the car below wind shield wipers that has either a wire or plastic screen acrossed it ,, what purpose other than hold the wiper does this chamber provide does it let fresh air into the car, does it have a drain in it at the far ends by the fenders? Any way when I spray water in this chamber directed at passenger side only I get a rather large water leak on my floor board this is a 74 Imperial what cause this problem you can not see in this area or get your hand in very far.!!! Oh yes the drain for this chamber at back of engine block is open
Roger Cooper
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