Hello everyone-

There is water on the floor of my wife's '86 245. It rained pretty hard all day here yesterday. The water is only on the drivers side. It appears that there is water standing inside the air vent below the windshield wipers on the driver's side but not the passenger side. How can I clean this out, as I suspect a drain hole is clogged, causing the water to come in. Doesn't look like I can access it from engine bay. Thanks a bunch!!

Once you have the water drained you will need to clean the leaves out of the rocer panels. Pull up the black sill plates and peel back the carpet on all the doors, you will find three 2 inch plastic plugs, remove these plugs to get access to the rocker panels. This area will most likely be filled with wet leaves you need to get as much of this out as you can because it will lead to serious rust problems. I used a wet\dry shop-vac clean mine, I also used a coat hanger to reach as far up into the body as I could to clear out as much as possible.

Bruce, near D.C.

Ryan -

Look at the bottom of the rocker panel, looking up from ground. The pinch weld along there has several 3/4-inch long openings, they look like places where the pinch welded pieces don't touch by about 1/8-inch. These are drains for the intake you see water in. Poke something up there, I always find leaves or pine needles there.

If they are clear, you might try poking down through the water, angle outward towards the fender. Use a long something flexible and soft enough to not damage internal paint coating to get the water to flow down and out those drains (what comes to mind is a broken off power antenna plastic drive).

The air coming in those vents is what becomes "outside" air for the ventilation a/c system. The air intake is at the center, water is supposed to flow outward and downward and inside the rocker panels. Some air goes that way and dries out the water.

You may have a manually operated air door forward of the fuse panel. Look for that, but open it with care as there may be water behind it, too.

Good Luck,

Bob