|
First off - get the front carpet and padding out and let them dry out. The padding is foam rubber with a rubber scrim on the upper surface, and it will hold a lot of water a long time. In fact, the floorboards will rust through before the water evaporates.
Second - the water may have flowed through the wiring harness channel to the rear padding. There is a channel on either side of the car, next to the rocker panel inner side. The galvanized metal piece covers that channel.
Remove the galvanized piece and look. Take 4 or 5 full size newspaper pages and roll then into a fat tube. Flatten it, and stick it in that channel and way back under the seat mount. See if it comes out wet or dry.
If dry - hooray. If wet, pull the rear carpet and pads out, too.
With the front carpets and the front sill covers out, you can see 2 or 3 plastic dish-shaped plugs (5 cm diameter, or so) in the rocker panel vertical inner face. If the rocker panel drains are clogged up, the openings covered by those plastic plugs will be the overflow - and the source of your water in the cabin.
Take out the plugs and look inside the rocker panel. Whatever is in there came in through the grille in front of the windshield. It can be cleaned out with a vacuum cleaner and a long skinny tube attachment. Also remove the bottom anchor of the front seat belts and the panel that the anchor is attached to. That will open a larger hold into the rocker panel. Look for more plastic plugs under the vertical sides of the rear carpet, too.
Good LUck,
Bob
:>)
PS. All this I have done. Fortunately I was able to clear things up and the work was a one-time thing. The water source in my 1983 245GL was a leaky heater/a-c air box - done by a dealer during PO's ownership. Water was never removed, and there was a 6-inch diameter hole rusted through the floorboards under the driver's seat, and a "high water mark" rust line in the rear foot wells.
|
