2002 cowl leak prevention

My new (used 2002) has a loose cowl. This is my first rainy season with this car and saw that loose cowl could lead to leaking rain water. The driver side of cowl seems to be tightly sitting against glass. but passenger half is loose and very shaky. My blower works fine and water leaks out bottlom of car when A/C is used.

I plan to glue down cowl with silicon automotive weather strip adhesive (the black stuff). While there, I am going to check for "rainhat" on A/C vent. Can you tell me if hat is waterproof patch placed over vent or does "hat" need to allow vent to allow air passage? I'll also be looking for mismatched body seam that can channel water and seal it. Suggestions/Help wanted. Thanks

The leak when using the A/C sounds like a plugged drain for the evaporator core housing. The condensation on the evaporator core would normally drain outside the car. If the drain is plugged, the water has no where to go other than through a seam in the housing and into the cabin. This drain should be low on the passenger side firewall in the engine compartment. There will likely be a length of hose to guide the water below the level of the car's floor.

As for using an adhesive to hold the cowl down, you'd be better off determining why the cowl does not sit tight and fixing that. Many modern cars have a cabin air filter that is installed below that cowl. To replace it, the cowl needs to be removed. If your Taurus has one of these filters, you certainly won't want to glue the cowl down. This would also mean that the filter was likely changed once before and maybe some of the retainers broke or were lost and not replaced.

There was a technical service bulletin on leaks during rain storms. Search this forum for keywords and you'll probably find more details.

-Rod

Hi, thanks for responding.

My 2002 SES has cowl variant I haven't seen posted. The plastic cowl has 4 legs extending down to 4 rectangular holes in the body. There is a metal double sided locking clip on the end of the cowl legs. One or two of these legs wasn't seated in the hole and leaving the cowl loose at that point. There are another 4 u-shaped clips inside the engine compartment holding down front of cowl. I found on reassembly these front clips could push cowl back far enough to unseat the top cowl clip(s).

THe cabin air filter has a plastic roof (shield?) that covers the top and the extends about one inch beyond the filter into the cowl cavity. Shield covers top and the tapers to cover sides of filter at the opening. The shield pops up for filter install and locks down. It doesn't appear to be added. The filter has a screen underneath it. Filter was really dirty and covered with leaves, glad I changed it.

Does this sound like I've got a filter shield (rain hat)?

As luck would have it, its starting to sprinke and I didn't check for body seam leak. My water leak is actually AC condensation into engine compartment... no problem there.