Pesky Leak That Soaks Blower Motor

[JOHN1242]

Whenever my car is outside in the rain ,my carpet is wet by the blower fan under the dash and the motor kicks in and out or just dies. When it dries, it works fine.

My question is............should I reseal the windshield? should I look at the rubber hood seal? or is there a sunroof drain that some cars have that could have come loose?


Has anyone heard of this? Any help would be appreciated!

JOHN
98 Gen 2

 

[chicken]

search for "fresh air inlet" many have had this problem, basically its the air inlet under the wiper cowl panel, the seal around the bottom leaks and fills up the air box

 

[Rich88LSC]

What Chicken said, but one of the plastic screws that holds the cowl covers on broke on my car. I wasn't in a rush to fix it and the other ones get got lose or stripped so it was not making a tight seal against the bottom of the windsheild. One trip to the car wash later and the blower motor didn't work. New clips and screws and everythign is fine.

 

[JOHN1242]

You guys are awesome, thanx a million!

JOHN

 

[BAD97LSC]

best way to do it is get another set of hands and take the hood off, take the wiper arms off, then remove the plastic cowel panel. you will see the vent on the pass side, its about 4x6 oval, take a utility knife and cut the seam sealer around the base of the vent the best you can and gently remove it not damaging the flange on the bottom of it. once removed, razor off all the old sealer on the fire wall and from the vent itself, clean it up real nice. then go to autozone and buy a caulking tube of seam sealer, run a huge fat bead of it along the bottom of the vent flange and place it back down where it was, push it down good so the seam sealer squeezes out around the flange, then take your finger and smmoth the sealer out real good making sure you see no crack around the flange, getting around the backside is tricky, i use a flathead and small mirror, once you have it all sealed up again, replace all the parts you took off, your leak will be fixed, i have done this to 4 different 97-98 marks already for customers, its a nice saturday or sunday project, not hard at all.

 

[Burbank98lsc]

Also check your seal(foam) on the cowl panel where it meets the glass above the vent as I had leak on my 98 mark and I sealed the vent good and it didn't help and it was still leaking till I replaced the foam gasket on the cowl panel.

 

[JOHN1242]

can I do this without taking the hood off???


JOHN

 

[BAD97LSC]

you wont be able to get the wiper arms off with the hood on unless you want to totally wreck the paint on the edge of the hood, a first gen you can take the wiper arms off with the hood on, but a 2nd gen you cant without damage, you'll need to remove the hood, its very easy, undo the hood struts from the hood and unbolt the 4 ten millimeter bolts, the hood only weighs about 28 lbs. its very easy.

 

[kustomizingkid]

I took my arms off with the hood on... just let them go to the up position and then removed them.

 

[BAD97LSC]

i forgot you can do that, still, trying to seal this vent up without taking the hood off is like trying to change your tire without taking the rim off the car, it can be done, but its a lot easier to do it right, why fight it.

 

[Staffamerica74]

If you take your hood off mark the bolts so you get it on exactly how you took it off. Ive never taken the hood off a mark but I have done it on other cars.

 

[kustomizingkid]

I would drill alignment holes.... that makes it wicked easy to get everything back on right.

 

[BAD97LSC]

if the car has factory paint, you dont need to drill anything or mark anything, when the bolts are removed from the hood you will see plain as day where the washers from the bolts were because there wont be any paint there. its a 2 second task to put a mark VIII hood back on exactly where it was, you would have to have one arm and be in a coma to mess it up!

 

[kustomizingkid]

Lol.... good point Jamie, the paint should be damn obvious.