Water Leak

[Sue Beddoe]

Has anyone found water leaking into the passenger foot well, if so where did it come from, I’ve taken my 156 to the garage twice now have had the heater matrix replaced but still have the same problem.

Can anyone help ?

[franzzz]

Uhm strange....

The wather is from the engine (paraflu...) or is normal wather ?

[asme]

I'm posting here as this is the only thing on the web I can find on this problem

I had the same problem of water leaking into the passenger footwell, with the following symptoms. Th air-con is on, the air is quite damp and I've gone round some rather sharp corners. The water leaks through the air blower motor and out of a little drain hole.

The real problem is that the air con is creating condensation. Usually, this drains away, but the drainage hole can become blocked, causing a puddle of water to collect. This then gets thrown around the air vents as you corner; the classic being while going round a round-about and your passenger starts screaming.

If you look along the front of the inside of the car, between the two footwells, you may be able to find the plastic casing containing the air-con's heat exchanger. At the lowest point is a kind of drainage channel which leads to the back of the engine bay. If you look in the engine bay, you can see where the drainage hole leads, just at the bottom of the heat-shield fabric, central to the car and above the steering rack/arm, under the carbouretor. There should be an inch-wide little black sleeve-type thingy. This is hard to get to and requires rather thin arms.

There are two solutions to the main problem:

1 - Take apart most of the front of the car in an attempt to get to the drainage hole. This is best done by a garage, but it's a lot of labour. I got half way and gave up.

2 - Get a bit of garden hose and feed it under the car and up the drainage hole. Then blast it with water until it leaks into the car - the theory being that if water can go one way, it can go the other. This is a bit fiddly and IF YOU USE THIS YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN. I offer no guarantees this will work, or that it will not wreck your car - it meerly worked for me.