Solution to Flooding Corrado

By: Corrado-l memebr

Did you ever have a pool of water in your corrado? Either by washing the car or in a rainstorm? Well then, this might be your easy solution:

Lift the hood and you'll see the big gutter running from side to side below the windshield. At either end, below the hinge for the hood, is a drain hole. The one on the driver side is bigger and unobstructed by any mechanisms, thus more free flowing, explaining why most people have the problem on the passenger side.

The passenger side drain is smaller and has the tube for the wiper fluid coming up through it, making it much easier to clog with leaves and debris. When a large volume of water, such as that from a car wash, fills the gutter and tries to drain out, it drops right out on the driver side but may pool on the passenger side.

Note that right beside this drain is the intake for the ventilation system. It's about a six inch wide, two inch high tube held down with plastic tabs and with a sticky foam rubber gasket to seal the bottom edge. Mine was sealing perfectly and in excellent condition, but if your problem is chronic, you may want to check it.

To remove the intake tube, you'll have to lift off the rubber strip on the FORWARD wall, and you can lift away the flimsy plastic cover. I recommend against trying to loosen the rear edge; it's covered by the robust strips covering the bottom edge of the windshield, and I broke several plastic tabs trying the lift these off. Anyway it isn't necessary. Move the flimsy plastic thing aside and you'll see, on the outside edge of the intake tube, a little black cotter thing with an upright tab. Pull that piece out and the intake tube will be free...careful peeling it up. If it's in good shape, put it right back down because you want want to get the sticky surface dirty.

Here's where I discovered the problem most of us are probably having. Looking inside the intake tube, I could see trails in the dust where the water had spilled over the top and poured into the ventilation system, to drop out onto the passenger's feet. By pouring water into the passenger side drain, I saw that it clearly drained more slowly than the driver side.

I used a clothes hanger to ream out the drain; it had some muck in it, but not much. It flows a little better now, but even with a perfectly clear drain, the passenger side can be overwhelmed and water will always pour into the car.

Workarounds:

Make sure the air is turned OFF when you take the car to the wash. Some lazy carwash guys may leave the key in the accessory position (they often do if you're getting foam wax, sometimes they turn the lights on to signal this). I don't know if the suction into the intake would be enough to lift water in, but it's something to try.
Don't let the car be in heavy water conditions. I know that's not much help for some people.

Brian Dunning
bdunning@netcom.com

Now that I have solved the problem, how do I clean up the mess?

I had the same problem. I parked my Corrado in the driveway over night. Heavy rain showers flooded the passenger side that much that there was a centimeter of water above the carpet. After getting out most of the water it took me two days using a fan heater and a hair dryer to dry the carpet and damping material between carpet and floor. After removing the seat and lifting the carpet as much as you can without tearing it apart or removing the middle console (0.5 m) and fixing it in that position, I put the fan heater below. I ran it on low temperature (1kW) and put the hair dryer on low temperature (250 Watt) into corners where it is impossible to dry with the fan heater. Then I opened all windows and the sunroof and closed the doors. From time to time I changed the position of the dryers. It is important to check temperatures of the parts where the heater blows to and to keep enough distance between heater and the stuff to dry.
I tried to get the water out of the damping material with a spin dryer but the mat was torn into pieces even at low RPM :-(. Then I squeezed it out by hand as much as possible and used the fan heater to get out the remaining wet. It has to be fixed during drying in the shape it should have when dry.

I found two reasons for the flooding.
The water came in through the heating fan because the drains were blocked with leaves and the gasket of the fans intake snorkel was worn out. Replacing the snorkel and regularly cleaning the drains avoided that procedure since then.

Johann

'91 G60

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