I have a creaking sound coming from the left-rear of my Focus. I can hear it from inside at all speeds whenever I go over any kind of bump, or even just driving through a parking garage. The noise is extremely loud when I am jacking any corner of the car. I even jacked up the left rear and used PB.
Answer(Fixed with regular old packaging tape)First off, the leak is due to water getting inside the airconditioner's air intake. Water runs down the passenger sidewindshield and flows between the windshield and the crowl (thecrowl is the big flat plastic seal connected to the bottom of thewindshield).
Therefore, Ford put in a gutter on the bottom-side ofthe crowl that is supposed to collect this water and move itelsewhere to a safe place.The leak occurs because this gutter doesn't have a big enoughlip on it to keep water from flowing over the gutter (similar tohow a bent-down rooftop gutter would overflow when it rains). Thiswater flows into the air conditioner's air intake, which is locateddirectly beneath the crowl. Ford should have fixed this problem!They've had six generations or more cars with this sameproblem.Instead of fixing this gutter (by adding a bigger lip on it), Idecided to start with the easier route of covering half of the airintake with packaging tape. To do this, you need to lift up thehood of the car and lift up the crowl. There are 3 clips on thecrowl that need to be unclipped and you can lift up the crowlafterwards (with a bit of wiggling) at least enough where you canget your arm underneath it.Once you have the crowl up enough, you will see the air intakecovered by a grating. I simply cleaned this surface and placedpackaging tape over half of the grating (the half that is towardsthe center of the car).
You need to make sure that the tape coversthe grating and the grating's housing so that there are no gapssuch that water can still flow into the air intake. I actually tookout the entire housing so that it would be easier to clean and getto, but this is a little bit difficult and requires a wrench.Also, I took a cheap plastic mechanical pencil (or some rod) andtaped that down the center of the grating so that this wouldprovide a lip so that water cannot get from the taped half of thegrating to the untaped half of the grating.
This might not benecessary, but easy enough to do.We had heavy rains and I lifted up the crowl to see if myrigged-up fix actually worked and it worked much better thanexpected. AnswerMost vehicle that have this problem, and being a ford man, it'syour heater core! What's a heater core? In laymen terms, is't aminiture radiator that water come's from your main radiator cyclesthrough the engine and in to your heater core and back through theradiator.
You know when it's winter and it's cold and you turn onthe heat inside the car, well that's how you get heat from theheater core. Either it's a loose hose connection ( doubt it) or youneed to replace the heater core and that's not fun. That's whereyour problem is and you need to replace it now or flood the floorboard of your car.Keo AnswerDuring the summer, it is NOT the heater core unless your car isa sauna.
If it is only on the passenger side, I'll also bet it onlyhappens when the air conditioner runs. Look under the car aroundthe firewall on the passenger side for a small tube hanging down.This will be the drain for condensation on the AC. Carefully poke awire up this hose to clear the blockage. AnswerAll good information but I had the identical problem, and itcould be this. One morning after it had rained I had a puddle ofwater on the front passenger floor.
I traced the water entry up tothe openings where the heat would come out. First I thought it wasthe heater core or something but the water was clear, and it hadrained. Then I thought it was the windshield as I had heard aboutsome windshield seal problems. So the next Saturday I took the trimpiece off which is just below the wiper on the passenger side togive it a look.
When that was off I could see a cowl that is theair inlet for the heat and a/c and could look down and see the fan.So I next took a few cups of water and poured it around the cowlwhere the rainwater would normally flow and lo and behold, itstarted to drip into the fan area. The cowl was not sealed properlyto the metal shroud that it was attached too. It was pretty easy toremove the two nuts and because the rubber gasket was still in goodshape, I kept that and put a small bead of silicone on the gasket,cleaned the mating surface and put it back together.
Problem solvedfor free in a couple of hours.
When you say the usual culprits, what have you checked? The door weatherstrip I assume? What about the scuttle- have you cleaned/ checked that? When the pollen filter gets changed is usually a good opportunity to do this- it's incredible how much crap (leaves and dirt mostly) gets in there and if it blocks the drains at either end (or even the drains where they emerge into the wheelarch behind the plastic wheelarch liner at the rearmost end of the arch) then water can build up in the scuttle until it finds a way in to the cabin.
Also, do you have a sunroof? Yep checked them all, door weather strip is fine, the scuttle is clear as are the drains on both sides and behind the wheel arch liners.
The car doesn't have a sunroof so thats one less thing to worry about.The water does come in when its standing but I've not had a drive where its rained but dry before / after. I poured water along the tray where the wiper arms come through and it still came in, tried it there to try and eliminate a possible windscreen seal leak.With using the nappies under the carpet I've been able to narrow down where it appears in the footwell and initially it was on the seam and came up through those areas marked but now is higher up on the same seam on the bulk head.
Its not coming in through the fuse box nor as far as I can tell through where the pedals go through.How its getting into the chassis foot/rail is a bit of a mystery! When i bought my gal i had water entering the passenger foot well, turned out to be the windscreen seal on the drivers side had come away or split, it run in through the seal and run across the top of the dash along the bulk head and then down into the passenger foot well. Had to have a new screen put in on the insurance and when he took it out noticed that it was a replacement screen and it looked as if the installer had not cleaned all the old sealant off before fitting the new. Just a thought?
Passengers Footwell Wet After Rain Ford Galaxy 8
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