Hi Guys, When we took the carpet out of Mikey's Comet the floor was rusted out on the passenger side. No discoloration of carpet or evidence of heater core leaking. Brother Jim welded it up and did the POR thing so it looks good now. It was a mystery to me where the leak came from. I just thought of something, where is the condensation drain hose on an air conditioned car? This is a factory a/c car. Maybe the condensation from the air conditioner evaporator inside the car dripped on the floor and the carpet padding absorbed it. I notice on cars with air conditioning they always have a puddle of water on them under the passenger seat after they have been sitting after being driven on a hot day with the a/c on. Anybody have any ideas? This is not an item that would be referenced in a Chilton's. Kargyuz
The HVAC box behind the dash has a drain hose. It's a short piece of rubber hose, looks kinda like heater hose, and it attaches with a clamp to the back left corner of the box. You can see where it attaches in the pic below: The hose goes from that attachment point, through a hole in the floor and out under the car. The little "nipple," for lack of a better word, gets brittle and is very easy to crack or break off. Once that happens I could easily see how it might end up draining into the car. You might notice that the drain on my HVAC box in the picture looks a little different. That's because mine broke off when I was removing it from a donor car, and I had to rebuild it with fiberglass. It's a common problem, apparently.
Um, isn't that a heater box from a non-AC car? Did you post that before you got your coffee this morning?
Wow, that's just the kind of information that I needed. This group is a great resource. I'll have to get under the dash and check this out. Hopefully, we can do some kind of repair without removing anything. The a/c works so don't want to have to remove any fittings and lose what little R12 is still in the system. Report after we check out the problem. Karguyz
Report: The hose is still connected and the heater box seems intact, no cracks. Ran A/C for 10 minutes and didn't notice any water on the floor. Then, I didn't see any under the car, either. Maybe because we are in the desert wouldn't get much condensaion anyway. For now won't worry about it. At some future time when I'm under the car for some other reason might try to track down the other end of the condensate drain hose and blow some air thru it. Car is so low have to put it on stands to do any work. Mikey likes the soft ride of too weak springs, goes over potholes and speed bumps nicely, good shocks help. Karguyz
Yeah, if the humidity is low it will not drip much. Whenever the humidity does go up, try it again. If it's not A/C condensate, then there are two possibilities: the cowl vent is leaking and water is running through or around the heater box onto the floor when it rains, or the windshield gasket is leaking on that side of the car.
Matt, Thanks for the suggestion. Since we are in the San Fernando Valley don't get much rain. For now we aren't going to worry about it. BTW, bro Jim used something like "Freeze 12" to recharge the a/c instead of converting to 134. Works OK. We used Frost King heater duct insulation on the floor; stuck it down real good with 3M77. Taped the seams with aluminum tape. Then put some "123" aluminum backed insulatoin on top of that. And on top of that the carpet. If any liquid does get in, it will probably evaporate before it gets to the floorboards. Karguyz
