Pulled air vent cover under windshield . . Questions

[warmblood58]

Hello all, just pulled the grill /air vent cover under windshield/windshield wipers (tons of dried debris that I vac'd out) the drivers side drops off and goes straight down (passenger side is closed) I assume this just funnels water straight down to a drain? I want to rinse this area out but do not want to flood cabin - safe to do so? Thanks. I think I will secure some light mesh to the underside of this grill after painting to eliminate debris from passing through grill and collecting in this area - no rust! I got lucky!

[SJTD]

The cowl vent supplies air to the vents in the driver and passenger kick panels and the heater inlet.

These cavities and the heater are often full of leaves which hold water and cause rust. There is a small drain in each side.
Maybe you can see in there through the vents with a light to see how bad it is. How well is the passenger side blocked? Leaf proof? water proof?

You can run a vacuum hose down there but it's better to pull the vent covers off. A pain on the right side if you have AC. Get the leaves out before flushing the dirt.

Would be good to pull the heater off but two nuts are behind the AC.

[warmblood58]

Thanks! Exactly the info I was looking for - will make a log extension for my vac and wiggle it around to capture what I can, thanks again and see what I can access via lower vents.

[Theodore]

Hey, warmblood58, there was a great post on this back in December
https://www.fsjnetwork.com/forum/vie...208703#p208703
Like, the previous poster, I would also recommend pulling the heater core box - I cleaned mine as part of a/c & heater core refresh a few months ago - it was 1/2 full of leaves.

BJs Off-road has a good video on YouTube
https://youtu.be/jdfE9-zWamQ

Passenger side

Hand-cleaned

Scrubbed with soap & water


Drivers side

Scrubbed with soap & water


Gallon-worth of compost

[warmblood58]

Wow, will do! Did this on my '83 Dodge pickup, will follow up on lower vents with GW. Seems like creating some kind of screen filter under cowl cover would be a good idea to keep pine needles, leaves, etc out would be a good idea.

[inkedmonkey]

Oh yeah. I epoxied some screen to the backside of my panel after cleaning everything out.

[SJTD]

Just remembered. You can pull the heater blower rather than the whole housing which is a pain.

[rang-a-stang]

I had the trifecta in mine: Mouse house in the heater core area, leaves up about halfway past the kick vents, and holes in my heater core housing!