Lots of water in the passenger footwell
Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2016 3:27 pm
My better half called me on Thursday of last week saying that the front passenger footwell was full of water and there was a rather pungent smell emanating from it. My initial thought was either she left the window open during the recent storms or there was an aircon leak.
Bit of searching on the internet and I found a few posts talked about there being certain drainage points in the engine bay that get clogged up and the water overflows.
I undid the 2 grills in the engine bay (pictured below) and I was shocked by what I found...
Once I removed the grills and the what I believe is a mains distribution box (though this a pure guess to would welcome any input), I found that there was a large amount of water underneath (a fair few litres to say the least). The pictures below don't do the amounts justice.
I took a long screw driver and fished around to see if anything was blocking any drainage holes and hey presto, suddenly the sound of water came from under the car.
Once the water had fully drained out I could see that there was a lot of gunk and leaves that clearly was blocking the water from draining. I vacuumed the area and could clearly hear what sounded like a rather large amount of stuff being sucked up. To my delight my parking sensors started working again after this job so it is highly likely that the water was affecting the electrics of the car
Saturday afternoon saw a huge a mount of rain, so this proved an ideal time to see if I had indeed cleared the problem. I am happy to no more water had collected or overflowed.
However, from what I have read, even though the footwell and carpet are relatively dry now, I gather that there is a high likely hood that there is water resting under the carper (due to the carpet being raised on foam pads). I ran out of time this weekend, but I will probably remove the front seats and lift the carpet and see what is underneath.
I will try and takes some more descriptive pictures, but would recommend to all e70 drivers clean underneath the grills picture, to save you grief later on.
RC
Bit of searching on the internet and I found a few posts talked about there being certain drainage points in the engine bay that get clogged up and the water overflows.
I undid the 2 grills in the engine bay (pictured below) and I was shocked by what I found...
Once I removed the grills and the what I believe is a mains distribution box (though this a pure guess to would welcome any input), I found that there was a large amount of water underneath (a fair few litres to say the least). The pictures below don't do the amounts justice.
I took a long screw driver and fished around to see if anything was blocking any drainage holes and hey presto, suddenly the sound of water came from under the car.
Once the water had fully drained out I could see that there was a lot of gunk and leaves that clearly was blocking the water from draining. I vacuumed the area and could clearly hear what sounded like a rather large amount of stuff being sucked up. To my delight my parking sensors started working again after this job so it is highly likely that the water was affecting the electrics of the car
Saturday afternoon saw a huge a mount of rain, so this proved an ideal time to see if I had indeed cleared the problem. I am happy to no more water had collected or overflowed.
However, from what I have read, even though the footwell and carpet are relatively dry now, I gather that there is a high likely hood that there is water resting under the carper (due to the carpet being raised on foam pads). I ran out of time this weekend, but I will probably remove the front seats and lift the carpet and see what is underneath.
I will try and takes some more descriptive pictures, but would recommend to all e70 drivers clean underneath the grills picture, to save you grief later on.
RC
