Liquid Comin From Front Foot Wells?

[MADGT4]

I have no idea why or how but i THINK i have coolent coming into my cabin from the foot vent in the car and its all over the carpet and it only comes out when i corner?????

My car did over heat a lil the other day but now its all back 2 normal but i just wanna know why this shit is leaking into my car?!?!?!?!?

Plz help!

[Guest RedLineGTR]

could it be from the heater hoses??? i belive some of them run in the cabin, i'm not 100% sure but someone had a similar problem a little while ago.

[predator]

mine is starting to do the same

Just started happening this week. Sometimes it does it, sometimes it stops. Its annoying as I seem to be losing a bit of water through there.

[wrxhoon]

try the heater core in the cabin , hard to get to though under the dash

[NRB]

Yeah, I concur... heater core or lines running to it. It has probably rusted out a hole and when you get enough lateral Gs it's sloshing water out of the hole.

[MADGT4]

Yeah but i checked it and it looked greenish and plus smells like coolent?????

So water pump/heater?

Anyone got any idea on the price i will b looking at to get it fixed?

[Guest RedLineGTR]

depends what it is could be a hose or the mini radiator for the heater. NOt sure on prices thoe

[red17]

Umm MadGT4. of course its coolant, how do you think your cabin heater works, engine coolant is pumped through the firewall and into a metal heater core. It corrodes like any other part of the coolant system.

Id seriously stop driving the car whilst its leaking, loss of coolant will cause your car to overheat and if you think running an engine without oil is catastrophic, wait till you run it without water! Best way to bin a motor.

Id doubt its just a hose leak, or else it would be leaking more constantly.

Heater cores are not easy to replace, they involve removing alot of the dashboard. If i were you id get the screwdrivers out and remove the core yourself then take it to a radiator shop for repair. Or else you'll be paying a mechanic at 50-80 dollars an hour to do a job that could take a whole day to do.

red17

[MADGT4]

Bugger!

Thanx for the tip looks like i might be doing that then

And its not inconsistant its like consistantly leaking so yeah and mainly on the passanger side for some unknow reason, theres only a very small amount coming into the drivers foot well...

Um now does anyone know how easy/hard it is to remove basically all the dash like Red17 said?

[2rismo]

Damnit, mine has started this too.

Crap.

Adrian

[Demon Dave]

Although the liquid is probably coolant, it could be the aircon's refridgerant. When I had a leak on my AC system, I took it to my nissan dealer who regassed it and added some kind of green dye - the idea being it would be easier to detemine where the leak was coming from. The dye looked exactly like engine coolent...

if the leak only occurs sometimes, check to see if it only happens during/after using the AC...

[Craved]

i had this, started off small, the one nice winter morning the thing sh!t itself and i had steam billowing out the windows! bypassed the core and had to buy a new core for almost $400! just need to put it in now!

[Guest RedLineGTR]

question is thier coolant constantly pumping through the core or is it when u use the climate control system as in set it to a heating temp level, then it flow? or does it flow all the time?? Cheers ROb

[wrxhoon]

guys if ur heater is the problem u can still drive it as long as u turn the heater off . if u have climate control put the temp on the lowest seting 18 deg .

one way to check if its the heater when the car is at normal temp and when the ambient temp is say bellow 24 c put the heater on at the highest seting thats when the coolant should come in the cabin .

[Guest RedLineGTR]

Thanks wrxhoon i dont have a problem with mine. But for future reference.

[predator]

I guess its more pronounced, when the climate control is using a bit of heating to get a nice temp. Set at about 24c (18c gets too cold, even on 35deg days!) i guess that is when its been happening and it would be swapping between aircon/heating to maintain that.

Today - after removing my floormat, and seeing how much has been coming out - the loss from the radiator *does* match the leak, and its bigger than I inititally thought. Even just idling at standstill was enough to take a noticeable amount from the radiator.

Anyhow, i'm on the case... i can't drive around much with this happening for too long, as there is the risk of cooking the engine if it isn't topped up enough. Anybody who is having this problem *always* check the water level in the radiator and top up as necesary. For those that aren't aware: NEVER do this when the engine is already hot, as cold water into warm engine = cracked head

[predator]

ok, well this arvo i've been pulling it all apart. Took some photos too..

First photo is the coolant that you can see on the carpet.. 2nd is the actual water as it drips down. While it looks like one exact spot, water is actually leaking from a number of places to under the carpet.

Further to wrxhoon, its not actually *that* hard to get to I didn't think once you have worked it out.. You can remove the whole glovebox assembly, letting you get easy access to behind where all the heater stuff is. No need to remove the whole dash.

Getting too hot so i've had to take a bit of a break, will keep updated on future progress.

[predator]

ok, here is the glovebox after i'd taken it out..

To remove it, there are about 6x screws (circled red in the attachment). 2x of these are actually the catch to the glovebox, but you'll have to remove these also. Trickiest one is the one bottom right, which you'll have to do with the glovebox open, and using a long philips head to get in there.

After that you'll have to kind of pop the clips out (circled green) which attach to the upper part of the dashboard. I snapped one because its hard to do it without doing that but superglue will fix it.

Once you've done all that, you should be able to lift it all out as one piece, allowing you to get to all the heater stuff...

[predator]

This should be what you can get to after you've got all the glovebox out. I assume this is the "heater core", although i'm still not quite sure what that means, i guess its like an element.

I guess i'll find out once i get it apart and/or out. Looks like you can take the bottom part out. Thats my next attempt

[NZMO]

This should be what you can get to after you've got all the glovebox out. I assume this is the "heater core", although i'm still not quite sure what that means, i guess its like an element.  

I guess i'll find out once i get it apart and/or out. Looks like you can take the bottom part out. Thats my next attempt

Yeah that looks like the airconditioning unit,,in behind that is the heater core,, it looks like a minature radiator with plastic surround with 2 plastic hose connections coming from it,,,,, i called Natrad in melborne and they got me one supplied for $250 brand new shipped down from canberra.