Air Con Drain Mod

[Ian Simmonds]

Some of you may remember I'd had the delights of changing the heater matrix last year, and in a recent thread, had the Air Con fully re-gassed... It's now fridge cold... Brilliant stuff... Except...

This last week I did 1000 miles, well by Wednesday, things were getting, shall we say, a bit soggy in the footwells, by Friday it was soaking up the back of my trousers, by my heel. I was afloat.

The water was just water, and not coolant (thank Christ). So today I attacked the Air Con drain off the condenser box and behold... I got 1 pint of water out of it. The pipe (as you can see below)


Was restricted at the point where it came away from the condenser box, this has obviously been like it a long time as the pipe maintained it's deformed shape on straightening and it was further restricted by the carpet which is tight up against it.

So I've modified the drain with an additional piece of flexible tubing and removed the 'kinked' pipe.



Hopefully the carpets will dry out over the weekend and I'll make sure the drain is clearing properly on Monday's 180 mile run.

Well worth a check for all those with Air-con and wet footwells though, as the water level in the condenser box, once full, spills out into the hot air vents and exits into both footwells.

[Golfboy666GTI]

Interesting.
Ive had a similar issue with my RHD RS2. My leak is only in the passengers footwell when the aircon is all.
I guess I should take my pipe off to have a look. What do you have to take out to access the pipe? The glove box?

This is what my leak looks like:

[Ian Simmonds]

Yep, that's the leak okay... All you have to remove is the board/trim under the glovebox, it's held on with 2 (or maybe 3) small 10mm bolts. Then it's just a case of laying in the footwell. Be prepared when you pull the pipe off though, you'll get a pint of water come out.

I checked the drain was clear (exit side of the pipe/left side) by running a piece of old electrical flex down it, then plugging the hose onto it. (Being careful not to flood the inside of the car any more).

It should pour out by the front subframe underneath.

[Bowlerwell]

Good job Ian.
My parents' old Scorpio had this problem. They never got to the bottom of it.

[Greg_S]

I did a very similar mod a couple of years back when I removed the aircon and fitted an original type blower duct in place and had to re fabricate the drain.