Water leak through centre dash

[snarfarlarkus]

I have a pretty bad leak in my ph1 172 and it seems to be coming from the centre console/dash area as shown in the photo. I had about 2 inches of water in both footwells from heavy rain and would love this to be sorted.

Any help appreciated!

 

[Clio_fool]

Heater matrix busted? Coolant level dropped?

 

[JamesBryan]

Scuttle drains are the first place to look to see if they're blocked up.

Wipers off, trim off and stick a rod down all 3.

Left, right and centre.

 

[snarfarlarkus]

Heater matrix busted? Coolant level dropped?

Coolant level has stayed the same and when cleaning the leak, it seemed like rain water instead of coolant. How do I check if the heater matrix is busted? Heater and A/C works fine.

 

[snarfarlarkus]

Scuttle drains are the first place to look to see if they're blocked up.

Wipers off, trim off and stick a rod down all 3.

Left, right and centre.

Scuttles were cleared recently so I don't think it's them but i will check them again!

 

[Sash]

Scuttles were cleared recently so I don't think it's them but i will check them again!

Scuttle panel might be clear but the actual drains might be blocked and backing up.

 

[JamesBryan]

Scuttles were cleared recently so I don't think it's them but i will check them again!

The other possibility is the seal around the heater box in the centre of the scuttle, water could get in there if it's perished.

 

[snarfarlarkus]

The other possibility is the seal around the heater box in the centre of the scuttle, water could get in there if it's perished.

Thanks. Is there a way to check if this seal is broken?

 

[snarfarlarkus]

Scuttle panel might be clear but the actual drains might be blocked and backing up.

I will recheck these, thank you

 

[AL3366]

I had this exact problem and it turned out to be a bad seal on the heater box in the centre. My fix was to basically apply a whole bunch of silicon gasket maker around the seal and it hasn't leaked since.

To get to the offending part:

• Wipers off
• Take off the plastic panels that cover everything
• Take out the whole wiper motor assembly
• Once the wiper assembly it out you'll see the alarm speaker which is mounted on a bracket. The bracket is bolted through the duct in the middle so remove that. Once removed you should be able to pull away the duct from the blower.

Now when I did this, I seem to remember that I couldn't get the duct out from the passenger side of the car, even after removing the screen wash reservoir. The below is how I ultimately did it.

• Remove the panel behind the material that's on the bulkhead. Should be 3 or 4 10mm bolts
• The blower unit needs to come out. There's 2 bolts on the inside of the car. Poke your head up where the accelerator is and you'll see a black rectangle- this is the recirculation flap. There's 2 bolts at the bottom on either side that need to come out.
• You'll need to disconnect your AC lines from the part to the right of the driver strut tower. If you have AC (mine was all disconnected already so i didnt have to worry about this) there will be a lot of pressure in those lines so be careful.
• I also had to unbolt my intake manifold and move it forward a bit to allow enough room for the blower unit to come out.
• Once everything was unbolted the blower unit comes out and then you can also pull out the centre duct.

The duct seems to just use a foam gasket and mine was all torn apart and squashed which is why it leaked. I basically applied a ton of gasket maker to it and that's done the trick.

Do the steps in reverse to get everything back together. Again I'm sure I wasn't able to get the centre duct out from the right side of the car, avoiding taking out the blower unit. If it is possible to do it that way hopefully someone else can share some tips and tricks.

Hope this helps and good luck!

 

[dangerous dave]

I got my air line, stuck a pipe down into the drain, then blasted it through..

hoover and blow all the leaves and years of build up and rinse it all out and down that drain, finally blowing it through again with compressed air via a pipe. It’s an awkward angle to get in there.

when the waters flowing freely you’ve done a good job.

make sure you clear the scuttle fully twice.. I cleaned mine and it blocked up again shortly after, the flooding spreads the grime and leaves about so next time it rains it’ll swim over to the drain and clog again. I thought I did a great job the first time but apparently not.

 

[Amp540a]

I realise this thread is nearly a year old .
I had same issue in my 03 172 .
Being in the trade I have done many water leaks and even had a string of Clio with leaking sunroof to body seals that need replacing to rectify.
Always worth watertesting and having a good look round the car . Mine was so wet I took the interior out and watertesting no interior in I found it was pouring in both footwells either side of the heater .
Again it was the blocked centre drain . I took wiper linkage out as it was noisy and needed a grease up which helped access and I removed the centre drain tube .
A final water test before re-assembly showed it was ok.
I took the interior out early December , went away for 2 weeks then had Christmas and did not get back onto it until weekend just gone .
Despite squeezing out the foam underlay from front foot wells early December these foam sections still had a bit of water in after a month. I did get them dry but I think it goes to show the importance of removing carpets and underlay to really dry the car out .
If you don’t it will not dry out properly .
I found I still needed to use Hot air gun to dry the floors properly despite the car being under a cover during December off the road. Water gets round the sound proofing pads and under seams of the floor .

Just a note about water in the spare wheel well , mine was caused by failure of the seal around the outer boot handle , similar to the sunroof to body seal seal and no doubt the heater box .
Boot leak was a easy fix with silicone on the old gasket , water tested afterwards and all ok .

At the VW dealer I worked at the Tiguans with sunroofs leaked liked sieves and the water would run out of the carpet and underlay one hung up . A car in warranty would have carpets etc replaced.
D

 

[snarfarlarkus]

Just for future reference, it turned out to be the heater core. The foam around the heater core deteriorated and water leaked through. A local workshop fixed it by sealing it. Hope this helps!

 

[JamesBryan]

The other possibility is the seal around the heater box in the centre of the scuttle, water could get in there if it's perished.

Just for future reference, it turned out to be the heater core. The foam around the heater core deteriorated and water leaked through. A local workshop fixed it by sealing it. Hope this helps!

As i mentioned then.

Glad you sorted it.