tom102

My 76 Vette has been outside under some trees for awhile and a lot of debris has gotten past the screens in the cowl area and have gotten down into the area by the vents, probably clogging the drain holes and allowing water to back up and flood the driver and passenger side floor areas. I have been able to clean out the passenger side area by removing the vacuum actuator and door flap, but How in the world do I clean out the driver side area as the body mount is right in the way and I cannot reach into it to remove the debris? Does anyone have a solution for this?

dath

Is there any way you can get a vacuum cleaner hose in there? I haven't taken a look yet as it's the passenger side that leaks from that area on mine...

Sleper

Have you tried a air hose from inside. Watch your eyes. Good luck

SnoDrgn

rotorouter? :confused:

jerryp58

That's how I cleaned mine, the flexible vacuum cleaner hose :yesnod:

If the problem persists, you may also want to check this seal... http://users.erols.com/jerryp58/corv.../vetteseal.JPG

After vacuuming out the plenums, then caulking all of the seamed areas of the cowl and coating with undercoating, I put a bead of caulk at those seals and my leak was stopped :D

Good Luck.

NHvette

Hey Tom - welcome to the forum.
Usually folks with 1 post just want to sell their car. :lol: :yesnod:

I hope that your suspicions are correct. Having dissasembled the front cowl
area, it seems a bit far fetched to me that the debris has caused any water
runoff to reach the level that it would enter through the fresh air vents.
However, anything is possible.

Take a look at a post of mine from a month or two back. I had the front clip
off, and decided to block off both of the fresh air vents with fiberglass - for
several reasons. The pictures in here will give yo ua good idea of all the
things you can't see. Post is here:
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/zerothread?id=575723

PS - the fresh air flappers behind the kick panels can be removed fairly easily.
Unscrew the cable bracket from the body and the top pin on the flapper is spring loaded. Pull it down vertically - and carefully remove the flapper.
This will give all the access you need to clean this area out.

I suspect (but hope I'm wrong) that you may have a rusted windshield frame.
The conditions you describe sound like water entering the windshield frame
and running through the door pillar to the floor. (fingers crossed).

:seeya

tom102

Jerry
I looked at the picture from the url you gave me on the seal, It looks from the picture that it is sealed between the windshield and Fender Is this right?. I looked at mine and there is no seals in that area just a gap on both sides of the windshield and water can freely run down there. I can see what looks to be a metal spacer between the windshield and fender down about a half inch or so. If this is the case I am sure that is contributing to the leak. It appears that yours is sealed with silicone is this correct?

Thank You
Tom W

jerryp58

"It looks from the picture that it is sealed between the windshield and Fender"

"It appears that yours is sealed with silicone"

Correct on both counts.

I didn't look around to see if replacement seals are available. Mine weren't in terribly bad looking shape, but there was a gap here & there between the seal and the glass. I just set the tip of the caulking gun under the seal and pumped the caulk in for the whole length of the seal. I believe that this was the cause of the majority of my water problem. Everything else was probably minor.

BTW, if you're worried about your A-pillars, you can remove the inside trim and take a look at them. I was worried about mine but pleased to see that there was surface rust only :yesnod:

Good Luck.