Centre scuttle drain location - 182

[Darren S]

As many have experienced before, it's quite common to get water ingress in the footwells at this time of year - with the scuttle drains usually being the prime suspect.

I checked on mine today having recently had a damp patch on both sides at the front. That was making me suspicious that it was the centre one that was blocked, but before I went to that, I investigated both the driver and passenger sides first.

Watering can to hand, I had removed the the wiper mechanism and shimmied the water bottle across a little - enough so I could see below it. Sure enough, water gushed out onto the floor when I poured a little in. Same thing happened on the drivers side.

Repeated that in the middle area and next to nothing came out. The smallest of drips - so the centre drainage was clearly blocked.

Getting the wiper mechanism out is very easy - literally a 13mm and 10mm socket set is required. A wiper puller is a massive help - otherwise you'll be shouting and screaming in trying to get the damn things off. Something similar to this is very handy.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B088JZSYXB/?tag=cliospnet01-21

Once out, you should have access to the fairly large cavity that the wiper mechanism previously sat in. It also shows just how much crap gets trapped at the base of your windscreen beneath the trim!

Looking across from the water bottle to the passenger side, you can see approximately the area where the centre drainage hole is. I had a small length of clear plastic tubing (sticking upwards) which I found to be perfect for the job.

From the top down, you can see with the muck, that this was an area of water pooling. When I pushed the tubing through the hole, the water was released - quite smelly it was too. The red arrow indicates the direction of the front of the car.

Final point - make sure when you're putting the wiper mechanism back, the rear section 'docks' with the bulkhead pin sticking out. It's important that those two marry-up or else your wipers will make a racket and will not do their sweeping motion correctly.

 

[Matt Cup]

Nice little how to and something often forgotten about. 👍

 

[Amp540a]

Exactly what I did 2 weeks ago.

I took mine out at beginning of December and tried to get the excess water out of carpets and foam underlay before leaving to dry whilst I went away for a couple of weeks and then over Christmas. I started to put it all back together a couple of weeks ago , dried out the floor pans first , carpets had dried out but the sponge soundproofing was still holding water .

So after a month it was still not dry and there is no chance of them doing drying out fully if it is still soaked in water under the carpets . This is what can cause the condensation on inside of windows.
I did get them dry and refitted.

I recommend taking the carpets and soundproofing out to let them fully dry and allow you to dry out the floors too.

 

[Matt Cup]

I recommend taking the carpets and soundproofing out to let them fully dry and allow you to dry out the floors too.

Couldn’t you just pop a dehumidifier in there instead of removing the carpets etc?

 

[Darren S]

Couldn’t you just pop a dehumidifier in there instead of removing the carpets etc?

I tried that the other week - though the dehumidifier we have won't operate below 5C and it was bloody cold outside.

One thing I'm looking forward to sorting with the warmer weather.

@Amp540a - do you have to actually cut the soundproofing out? By that, is it glued to the floor of the car and ruined when you remove it?

 

[Amp540a]

I should think a dehumidifier will do it but depends how long you want to be without the car as it would take a long time I should think as the front footwell soundproofing is a 2.5ft x 2.5ft (approx) water soaked sponge under the carpet . You may dry the carpet but that will then soak the water out of the sponge soundproofing which could be sitting in water itself.
It was not viable for me as I had water on top of the floor mats there was so much and my experience of being in the trade a long time I know very well the only way to fully dry out a wet car is strip it and quite often stripping it is only way to find a leak which is what we usually had to do regularly at the vw dealers I worked at. So I applied that logic to the Clio.

Darren S
The sound proofing in front footwells as mentioned above is sponge and the rear footwells is made of recycled materials a bit like thick felt, a bit hard to describe but it soaks up water very well indeed. Neither are glued in .
Pop up the handbrake surround , pull back the centre console up over the gear lever
You will then see 2 black plastic heater duct pipes one goes under drivers seat and the other under passengers and they are held in by black plastic buttons , remove the pipes.
Remove plastic clutch foot rest which is held in with a torx head screw , can’t remember the size .
To the right of throttle pedal there is a large black trim button to remove and similar on passenger side.
Unscrew throttle pedal stop.
Release rear seat bases from front mounts by tipping them up forward and wiggling .
Unbolt both seats (13mm deep socket required) but I did not fully remove seats from car as I could not release one of the seat wiring connectors so I just tipped them as required to get carpets out.
If I have got everything you should now be able to remove a carpet and as I said I tipped seats back to get front section out and forward to get rear out .
I guess you could cut carpet round the seat mounts to save unbolting the seats but thats not how I work .

You will find that at the very front of the front carpet there is a strip of carpet about 25mm wide above the transmission tunnel joining across the left and right floor pan sections,now that could be tempting to cut as it would save moving the black heater ducts but thought it had to be there for a reason and I suspect if you were to cut it there is nothing to keep the passenger and drivers side together at the front and stop the carpet sagging below the sides of the centre console exposing the soundproofing. Hard to describe but take a look and you will know what I mean .

I then took the water soaked soundproofing out and dried front and rear floor pans out with cloths before using a hot air gun to dry it out from around the sound deadening pads and front seat crossmember .
The advantages of doing this with no interior in over a dehumidifier is that you can watertest and be sure where the water is getting in and once the leak is fixed you can watertest again and be confident the leak is cured because you have no carpet hiding the area plus if you bolt the seats back in you can carry on using the car whilst the carpets and soundproofing is out drying.
D

 

[vtec-e]

Definitely recommend getting the carpets and sound insulation etc out and dried asap. I have the Mk3 facelift, so probably different, but the sound insulation had soaked up a lot of water and were just rescued in time. Also, I the UCH sits on the floor and I didn't want to sort out a second issue caused by water corroding any connections. I removed the seats and centre console to make it easier to get the carpets and sound insulation out.

At the front bulkhead, there was single piece of sound insulation which I could not remove, so I lifted it up as far as possible where it met the horizontal surface of the floor pan and stuck kitchen roll and old towels underneath to start the slow process of drying out this part. I kept the sound insulation raised for over a month and it dried out as the air could get underneath.

Hope this helps

 

[Amp540a]

Mk3 is different but same process , I also found I had damp front bulkhead soundproofing but not that far up . I squeezed as much water out as possible and propped it away from the bulkhead with a piece of wood so that whilst I was drying out the floor pans and using the hot air gun to aid this the hot air did go up under the soundproofing . In the end I did just aim the hot air gun up under the propped up soundproofing to dry it out , just be very careful not to start melting things under there .

 

[Darren S]

I should think a dehumidifier will do it but depends how long you want to be without the car as it would take a long time I should think as the front footwell soundproofing is a 2.5ft x 2.5ft (approx) water soaked sponge under the carpet . You may dry the carpet but that will then soak the water out of the sponge soundproofing which could be sitting in water itself.
It was not viable for me as I had water on top of the floor mats there was so much and my experience of being in the trade a long time I know very well the only way to fully dry out a wet car is strip it and quite often stripping it is only way to find a leak which is what we usually had to do regularly at the vw dealers I worked at. So I applied that logic to the Clio.

Darren S
The sound proofing in front footwells as mentioned above is sponge and the rear footwells is made of recycled materials a bit like thick felt, a bit hard to describe but it soaks up water very well indeed. Neither are glued in .
Pop up the handbrake surround , pull back the centre console up over the gear lever
You will then see 2 black plastic heater duct pipes one goes under drivers seat and the other under passengers and they are held in by black plastic buttons , remove the pipes.
Remove plastic clutch foot rest which is held in with a torx head screw , can’t remember the size .
To the right of throttle pedal there is a large black trim button to remove and similar on passenger side.
Unscrew throttle pedal stop.
Release rear seat bases from front mounts by tipping them up forward and wiggling .
Unbolt both seats (13mm deep socket required) but I did not fully remove seats from car as I could not release one of the seat wiring connectors so I just tipped them as required to get carpets out.
If I have got everything you should now be able to remove a carpet and as I said I tipped seats back to get front section out and forward to get rear out .
I guess you could cut carpet round the seat mounts to save unbolting the seats but thats not how I work .

You will find that at the very front of the front carpet there is a strip of carpet about 25mm wide above the transmission tunnel joining across the left and right floor pan sections,now that could be tempting to cut as it would save moving the black heater ducts but thought it had to be there for a reason and I suspect if you were to cut it there is nothing to keep the passenger and drivers side together at the front and stop the carpet sagging below the sides of the centre console exposing the soundproofing. Hard to describe but take a look and you will know what I mean .

I then took the water soaked soundproofing out and dried front and rear floor pans out with cloths before using a hot air gun to dry it out from around the sound deadening pads and front seat crossmember .
The advantages of doing this with no interior in over a dehumidifier is that you can watertest and be sure where the water is getting in and once the leak is fixed you can watertest again and be confident the leak is cured because you have no carpet hiding the area plus if you bolt the seats back in you can carry on using the car whilst the carpets and soundproofing is out drying.
D

Great response - cheers! Will help me for sure when I tackle it - and others!

 

[Amp540a]

Here is a carpet and you can clearly see the strip of carpet joining the 2 floor pan sections , I think if that is cut it will result in a poorly fitting carpet . The oval cut outs in the back of the front section are where the heater ducting for the rear passengers comes through but at the front I think the ducts are over that carpet strip. The ducts also sit on the soundproofing which laps up the side of the transmission tunnel in area of centre console. I did think about cutting but really see no point cutting any carpet or soundproofing to get them out as it is so easy to do by pulling off the handbrake surround and centre console , popping 6 trim buttons , unscrewing throttle stop and 2 torx screws and even the seats are a 5 minute as side job if it’s on axle stands.