Water leaks to the inside of the car can be dangerous!  You’ve got to remember that mold and mildew in a confined space like the inside of a car can be very dangerous.

So, how do you go about finding those leaks?  Well, you’ll probably need an electronic leak detector such as we have here.  This is a transmitter (right) that goes inside the car, then we have a receiver (left) for the outside of the car.  Now, a leak could be coming from just about anyplace, could be in the cowl area, around the windshield wipers, maybe even around the outside mirror.

But what you do to find it is turn on the transmitter, put it inside the car in the general area where the problem is, close the car up, turn on the receiver, and as it comes close to the leak, it will start to leak because the radio waves come out where the water goes in. Pretty simple device.

In addition to that, there is another problem that people are faced with and a lot of it is through confusion.  Many people have the idea that doors are sealed against water getting inside them. They are not!  Water can go into the door; it runs through the door, and it runs out of small drain holes down in the bottom of the door, and that’s fine until those drain holes clog up.  When they do, the water builds up in the door until it reaches one of these lower holes and spills out into the inside of the car.

You can fix this yourself.  We have a cut-away section of a door right here, and we’re going to shine a light through one of these holes.  You can see right here, with the light shining through it, and there are several of those on the bottom of the door.

All you have to do to clean the drain holes is take a piece of coat hanger, like we have here, wrap some tape around it so it can’t go up into the door too far and hit some wires or damage anything, and you simply push it up and down into the hole, work it around in there to dislodge any dirt that may have accumulated over time, but don’t look straight up at it while you’re doing it because if there’s any water in there you’re going to get water right into your face.

Now, it’s a very simple thing, it will keep the carpets dry, it will also keep the bottoms of the doors from rusting.



If you have a question or comment, write to me.
The address is MotorWeek, Owings Mills, MD, 21117.