I'm trying to find out how many people have leaky cowl vents and don't really have any plans to fix them the right way (cutting the cowls apart).
Mine leaks a little, however I have had the box out and it isn't rusty. I think it has a poor seal. I'm too lazy to investigate though.
We have two Mavericks. One has never leaked and the other leaked like a torpetoed submarine. Luckly we were able to repair it by not cutting the car apart. We cut out the rust and replaced the " hat" from the inside of the car and it has never leaked again. It sure was not easy to do that way but it worked.
rig it mine don't leak but if they did I would rip out my heater unit and weld and silicone in a patch from under the dash
Mine leak on my '72 and I have drilled out the spot welds and taken the top of the cowl completely off. There is no hat on the driver's side since this is a factory A/C car, and this is where the rust hole was. There is now a patch welded in and the entire area has had POR15 applied...next comes putting it back together! This is not a job for the faint of heart...You have to remove the entire dash, the windshield and drill out probably at least 50 spot welds..I would imagine it would cost big $$$ if you don't have the tools and know-how to do it yourself... Mark
I'm working on a temporary solution to keep water a leaves out of the cowl vent area. Would anyone be interested in something? Russ
Russ; I think everyone here would be interested in a low-cost, hopefully easy to install way of protecting our cars from rust and leaking. I will be looking forward to what you find. Let us know if we can be of help. Earl
My fix Well I don't think that the vent was to blame, but I'm not sure (yet) I have a/c so I don't have both but I do have the one on the passenger side, I (it is frouned apon) but I put some fiberglass over the slits, and drilled out holes for the washer fluid, but I still get water in the car, and it isn't comming from the a/c box, but it runs down it, so I'm thinking it is the windsheild gasket As I plan on redoing the hole car from bumpewr to bumper top to bottom. I plan to however to keep the fiberglass in the vents it gives the car that sleek look, I don't use the fresh air at all in fact I undid the vac. motor for it, and left it closed, I never saw a real big difference in the fresh air and using the cabs air, some say your heater air isn't as good???? I never noticed my mav heater sucks, but I think that is the cause of the a cracked and bondoed and ducket taped box (previous owners jobs) which I paln on finding a new one (somewere) sorry for the ramble 754dr.
you may be right about the windshield, when I 1st got my Maverick it leaked so I just assumed it was the windshield,I had never heard of the leaking cowl vents,I bought some clear calk and pulled the seal back and calked the whole windshield,after it dried I put a water hose on the windshield and let water run over it for a good while, It didn't leak,now the calk has separated from the windshield and its leaking again
Sometime the only thing left to do is to pull the windshield out, dig out all the old sealer and reseal it. Thats what we did with mine and the windshield leaks are gone. If the windshield gasket is split, it can cause water to get in too.
What we did was clean out the windshield opening of all the old sealer first. Then we primed and painted it. Then we put the windshield in the gasket and set it in place. Next we put all the moulding clips in place. Then we applied a bead of black windshield urathane sealer around the gasket. Then just to be on the safe side we ran a very thin bead of sealer around the outside of the windshield were the glass meets the gasket. It has not leaked since.
