AC soaking my carpet. Help!

[emwilli]

I have a 93 Cav. When I have my AC on there is water coming out from the firewall on the drivers side above the brak and gas pedals that is soaking the carpet. At first I thought it was rainwater so i cleared out all the junk under the cowling but that wasn't the problem. Its the AC. The water is clean so I assume its condensed water from the system. Anyone out there have any experience with this problem? Any help would be appreciated.

[millrtime]

check to make sure the pipe exiting the firewall into the engine bay isnt clogged. if it is, it could be backing up into the dash and finding a way out. i dunno how many water releases there are in cav's but thus far i have only found one in my 03. its a bent 90 degree pipe coming straight outa the firewall from the ac on the passenger side.

[toddr]

the only drain is on the pass side fire wall mine use to get the fllor wet on the pass side i am thinkng it eith traviling or your heater core is leaking or the water may be fowiling water in through a gromet

[crazyduetoiowa]

i have a 94 with the same problem. have you had the heater core replaced? Mine had been replaced and the shop my ex girlfriend took it to busted the cover for it which also directs the condensation from the a/c to the out side. so I sealed the all up but im still having leaking issues. check around the heatercore cover after you have drivin the car with the a/c on. Let me know f you find anything new as i have the same nagging problem...

[davidpick]

I had this problem for a long time and nobody I took my car to could fix it. However, the solution turned out to be quite simple.

1. There is an area under your hood just below your windshield. This area has 2 drainage flaps on the firewall that allow water to drain out through the engine compartment. Remove all leaves from this compartment and the drains. With a hose let water flow into the compartment and make sure it is coming out of the drains on both sides. If this area is clogged, water will flow into your blower housing.

2. Remove your blower housing. To do this, unplug all wires connected to the housing. Go around the outside of the housing and remove all nuts and bolts holding the housing to the firewall. On my '94 Cavalier, there are two nuts on the bottom which are connected to bolts permanently attached to the firewall. One of these is behind the steering gear and is hard to access. I had to remove both steering pump lines from the steering gear then I unbolted the gear from the mount on that side. This enabled me to pry the steering gear away from the nut I needed to remove. I ended up removing the nut with a universal joint socket.

3. Now that your blower housing is removed you should have a big pile of leaves that came out and there probably will still be come caked onto your evaporator core. Remove all of these leaves and hose everything down completely.

4. Reassemble everthing. You will notice a gasket on the blower housing that goes around the evaporator core. I used a gasket in a can type of stuff. It worked very well.

Run your air conditioning on high and you should see water drip out from under the car.

I hope this helps you.

[emwilli]

I only got this car about a year ago from a friend and i really only just noticed in the last coouple of months of the lead in the car. At first I thought it was the leaves and junk that collected under the cowling and blocking the rubber drainage ports. I thought for sure this was the problem because they were totally blocked with what I can only describe as compost. Handfuls of it were pulled out from both sides. Turns out it was not the problem. It was indeed the airconditioner evaporator. I disassembled the heater core cover which contains the port to vent the water through the firewall. Well I wasn't quite ready for what I saw though. There is a seal behind the heater core cover which seals it to the fire wall and has holes in it for the heater core hoses and evaporator lines to run through it. This seal was pretty deteriorated and when I peeled it back noticed that the firewall behind it was completely rusted out behind it. This leak has been going on for a very long time. . So now what to do? This little job just became a monster of a job to fix. I started with fiberglassing the firewall. Didn't come out all that great, but whatever, it doesn't have to look pretty. I ordered a seal for the firewall but in order to put it in the heater core hoses have to be disconnected. Thats a pain in the ass but the worst is I have to also disconnect the evaporator to get the lines through the seal. Now I have to have the system drained and to top it all off the system is still set up for R12 and works great. I managed to get my hands on some R12 instead of having to change it over to R134a. From what I've read to do it right is a pain and I'd rather just leave it R12 if I can.
So I'm still waiting for the seal to arrive and I was thinking that this would for sure solve all of my problems. Now that I just read your thread about the blower case and cleaning that out I'm not so sure. It never occured to me that this could be the problem and what I'm dealing with is the result. I'm having a hard time getting my brain around the idea that leaves collected behind the blower case is causing the leak which by the way looks like anther pain in the ass job. So I guess I can put the seal in and if that does not solve the problem go ahead and pull the blower case off and clean it out. Do yoou really think I need to do this? Are you sure this is the problem? Any other ideas or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[davidpick]

It is a bit of a pain in the ass and there's no way I can be certain that this is your problem, however, I really would try it. I have had no leaking inside of my car since I did this last weekend. All the draining is outside of the car. I'd be willing to bet that you have a lot of debris on the engine compartment side of your evaporator core. Remove it and you'll see. This could actually be easier than working under the dashboard. If you do it, let me know what happens.

[emwilli]

So I decided to go ahead and pull the blower. I knew it wasn't going to be easy by your instructions and I wasn't wrong. There was no way to get to that bottom bolt without taking off the power steering lines like you said. The problem was the fittings on the lines were very rusted and that would have been a project in itself. Luckily I was able to get all the other nuts and bolts off. I was then able to pull back the top of the blower case and sure enough there was a whole bunch of leaves in there up against the evaporator just like you said there would be. From inside the car I was able to shake the evaporator a bit and some of the leaves fell into the car. I found that by carefully sticking a screwdriver in the blower case and dislodging the leaves and then have them drop down in the car by the evaporator. It took a hile but I was alble to get out all of the leaves. After putting everything back together and running the ac for a while there was no leak. Looks like that did the trick. I won't be totally convinced till I get some hot and humid days here in new york. But so far so good. Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it. I'll let you know if it holds up.

[davidpick]

Hey! Glad I could help. If it's draining properly, you will see water dripping under your car when it is parked and you have the ac on.