Help! Nasty water leak inside my car!

[2ndGenGuy]

Okay so I've been smelling funny smells in my car since it started raining here this winter. I noticed the other day that my carpets on the passenger floor, both front and back are SOAKED.

I took the carpets completely out of my car last night sucked about 2 gallons of water out of them, and thoroughly dried the passenger floor. This morning I got back in my car and found ANOTHER gallon of water puddled up. I soaked that water up this morning and started driving to work. And another rush of about a gallon of water poured in and started rolling around the floor.

I peeled off one of the rocker panel access hole covers, and stuck my finger in it and found the rocker panel was full of water. I am guessing that the rocker panel isn't draining properly. I couldn't figure out where they were supposed to drain, or really even where the water was coming from. I'm guessing there is a hole somewhere on the front of the rocker panel behind the front fender? Has anybody had this problem before? There's so much water coming into the car, and theres even little bits of rust starting to form on the passenger floor Where should they drain? Or should they not even be filling with water???

[2ndGenGuy]

Bump!

[1GCustomAccord]

Ok, the rocker panels have small holes in the bottom part, just following the line of the welding. They are likely to get full of mud and dirt, just insert something inside untill you get the water off of the rocker panels, and then you can flush with clean water to make sure of draining all the mud from inside.

[Hazwan]

^^ What he said. Theres like 342342 of them and I find it strange that all of them are plugged up. I should check out mine later.

[2ndGenGuy]

Yeah they've gotta be all plugged up. It's like a little lake inside the rocker panels. But we have lots of trees, tons of rain and debris getting rinsed inside them all the time. Also the whole bottom of my car was sprayed with some undercoating some years ago, I'm sure that plugged a lot of them up... I'm going to go look right now and see what I can find out... thanks guys!

[Hazwan]

Pics!

[2ndGenGuy]

Pics!

Here you go.... what drain holes do you speak of??

[1GCustomAccord]

[Hazwan]

Yeah and they sure looks plugged up to me lol

[2ndGenGuy]

Shit! Really? OK, I'mma go try that now.

[2ndGenGuy]

Okay so the thing you have circled in that pic is not a drain hole. It's where the reinforcement is placed so you can put the jack under the car and jack it up. HOWEVER, there is a drain hole half way up the car. But there is only one! It's right in the middle. It looks just like that, and I jammed my screwdriver up in there and it was some nasty muddy shit. But if the car is parked not perfectly level that thing will not drain. There has to be one up front and one in the rear. Doesn't there? Maybe there is one right inside the jack points, but I sure can't find a place to jam a screwdriver in. And I definitely don't see 30189 of them.

[1GCustomAccord]

Hahaha yeah, i see the draining "hole" in the pic, i dont remember how many of these are on this car because i changed my rocker panels with 16 gauge new ones and i just deleted the draining holes from my car :S. but if i remember well, there are 2 more in both sides of the R.Panels. Anyways, make sure to get the middle drain hole free of dust and the water will flow out (eventually!) .

[Hazwan]

So um apparently I have 423432 of them since whoever did the bodywork before must have added them on the bottom of the rocker panels, probably to shoot some anti rust stuff in there

[2ndGenGuy]

Well thanks for your help guys! At least that one hole is drained out. Maybe time for a drill, but I don't want to start more rusty spots... I'm going to blast that out with air and a vacuum tonight and see if I can't get all the crud out and get it flowing nicely...

[itzdave]

damn dude... my 4dr did that too. come to find out, on the floorboard behind the passengers seat, right where the metal comes up to start the rear seats, was a big ass hole letting in water from whenever i would drive from it splashing up...

[2ndGenGuy]

damn dude... my 4dr did that too. come to find out, on the floorboard behind the passengers seat, right where the metal comes up to start the rear seats, was a big ass hole letting in water from whenever i would drive from it splashing up...

Yeah! My blue car had that SAME problem. I bought all new grommets for it and my carpets quit getting wet. Not sure how they went away. But on the 1gee, all my grommets are in place, and are glued in by that undercoating that's all over the bottom of the car.

[itzdave]

naw. mine wasnt due to a grommet. my was due to a rusty hole about 1.5" by 7".

[79cord]

Okay so the thing you have circled in that pic is not a drain hole. It's where the reinforcement is placed so you can put the jack under the car and jack it up. HOWEVER, there is a drain hole half way up the car. But there is only one! It's right in the middle. It looks just like that, and I jammed my screwdriver up in there and it was some nasty muddy shit. But if the car is parked not perfectly level that thing will not drain. There has to be one up front and one in the rear. Doesn't there? Maybe there is one right inside the jack points, but I sure can't find a place to jam a screwdriver in. And I definitely don't see 30189 of them.

There's still a gap there immediately inboard of those jacking-point reinforcements on my car, both front and rear. Another rubber-bunged drain hole at the very bottom rear of the inner sill, and an inch or two higher up other rubber-bung plugged holes on the front and rear ends of the sills in the wheel arches.

But all these drains are really only designed to drain condensation out of the sills so if you had significant amounts of water getting in there I'd be removing those '81 wheel-arch liners & maybe the front panels & even giving the cowl/plenum area a thorough poking looking for trouble.
ALL cars are prone to rusting at the front end of the sill/rocker panel under the fenders though thankfully mine haven't suffered there & '81's might fare slightly better than others since earlier models didn't get those plastic front wheel-arch liners (here anyway).

One of my Preludes has rusted out though rust holes in the sides of the "A" pillars (under the windscreen trims) letting water down the insides of the door-hinge pillar & into the sills/rockers (not to mention the fact the sunroof drain tubes also dump water into the sills.

[2ndGenGuy]

There's still a gap there immediately inboard of those jacking-point reinforcements on my car, both front and rear. Another rubber-bunged drain hole at the very bottom rear of the inner sill, and an inch or two higher up other rubber-bung plugged holes on the front and rear ends of the sills in the wheel arches.

But all these drains are really only designed to drain condensation out of the sills so if you had significant amounts of water getting in there I'd be removing those '81 wheel-arch liners & maybe the front panels & even giving the cowl/plenum area a thorough poking looking for trouble.
ALL cars are prone to rusting at the front end of the sill/rocker panel under the fenders though thankfully mine haven't suffered there & '81's might fare slightly better than others since earlier models didn't get those plastic front wheel-arch liners (here anyway).

Thanks, that's what I was wondering. Yeah I will definitely check that out. I have a feeling it's leaking down from the cowl somehow and filling up the rocker panels. I can't figure out for the life of me why that side is filling up so much though. Tomorrow is thorough investigation day for sure. Thanks again! I'm going to pull those plugs and blast out that nastyness.

[Ichiban]

I thought the water off the cowl was supposed to pour down the face of the firewall? The stupid sunroof on my toyota drains into the rocker panels and always filled up the floor with water. Then they rotted off, and no more water

[2ndGenGuy]

Oh god, that's what I'm afraid of... my rocker panels rotting off. That's gotta be the worst repair you can do... I dunno maybe replacing a rear quarter panel on a hatch would be worse...

[Ichiban]

Meh, rockers are easy! the rear quarters suck bag lots though

[Hirst]

I wouldn't worry about it too much, they're the first thing to go on most cars here and they're not a big deal to sort out. Mine need doing at the back on both sides, but it shouldn't be a problem really. Especially since you can get a panel for it.

[2ndGenGuy]

I found the rubber plugs on the front and back of the rockers. BUT they're covered in undercoating and paint that's also covering the metal down there...



I don't want to pull that plug and risk peeling off the paint from the metal. I did find the drains behind the reinforcements though and unplugged them. Hopefully that will solve the problem. I'd like to find out how the water is getting in there though, and figure out if that's what it's supposed to be doing, is draining into the rocker panels... I thought they would just be drains for condensation...

[1GCustomAccord]

I found the rubber plugs on the front and back of the rockers. BUT they're covered in undercoating and paint that's also covering the metal down there...



I don't want to pull that plug and risk peeling off the paint from the metal. I did find the drains behind the reinforcements though and unplugged them. Hopefully that will solve the problem. I'd like to find out how the water is getting in there though, and figure out if that's what it's supposed to be doing, is draining into the rocker panels... I thought they would just be drains for condensation...

Well, i got some interesting news, there are 4 HOSES draining water from the bottom of the front and rear windshield frames at both sides, water flows trough the gap between the rubber and the windshields frames, and there are 4 draining holes with hoses going down POSSIBLY to the rocker panels.
Thats why ALOT of water can get inside them if the rocker draining "thingys" are plugged

Front left windshield draining


Rear left windshield draining


PS: Sorry for the bad quality pics but my phone camera and the darkness are not a good couple.