HOW-TO: Prevent Water From Leaking into Passenger Floor
Basically, I've seen this question a lot lately, and it is a known problem with some Neons. 2" of Water in the front passenger floor isn't fun, here's how to prevent it and clean it up.
I have had the EXACT same problem on both of my SRTs. My first one was by far the worst. It is a fairly common problem, that I've heard and seen alot with all Neons. It's basically a design flaw that there is no practical fix for, but you can guard against it if you know it's going to rain like hell.
Basically what happens, is when the passenger side of the vehicle is lower than the driver's side. I.E. parked on a curb or slope, the rain water backs up in the fresh air vent at the base of the windshield. There is a drain for it, but it isn't located in a ideal location and does allow water to pool on one side of it if the car is parked on a slope. If it rains hard enough the water overflows the edge of the fresh air intake and pours directly into the the blower motor and onto the passenger floor.
There are really only two ways that I know of to prevent this.
1. One is to park on a level surface or with the driver's side lower than the passenger side. Also, try and make sure the rear of the car is lower on the slope as well.
2. If you can't park the car flat or with the driver's side lower, before you turn the car off, turn the HVAC control to Re-Circulate, which cloes the flap for the fresh air intake and this will prevent water from getting down in there.
The strange sound you may from the blower motor is the blower spinning out the remaining water inside it. If you drive the car around afterwards with a little spirit around the curves, the water in the floor boards will mostly find it's way out, then turn the AC on full blast with the temp dial turned to heat and let the De-humidifier function of the AC dry it out for you.
Then go to a parts store or stealership and get an AC Duct cleaner(Spray Can) MOC chemical, and BG both make it and go to town with that through the fresh air intake and that should kill and prevent any possible mold issues. Hope this helps. As I've had to do it multiple times. Just one of the joys of owning a Neon.
Oh, I almost forgot...
There is actually a drain on the bottom of the blower motor assembly under the passenger side dash. It's on the very bottom and has a rubber flap/boot on it. It sticks out a little bit so it isn't too hard to find. That will allow you drain out whatever water is still in there, so the blower motor won't spin it up into the rest of the vents. The first time this happened to me, and I turned the blower on high, it actually spit water out of the vents at me. So, given that drain is there, DCX must have forseen the problem. I guess you could also put a bucket under there to catch the water too.
Hope this helps everybody with this problem.
Last edited by SRT-4 Jay : 05-07-2007 at 10:09 AM.
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