pinpointed my water leak, now what?

[8380 Labs]

i was pulling my seats out today to clean the carpet, and discovered some dampness in the passenger side footwell. pulled the carpet up to discover a sizable puddle.

good news is its new because the floorboards are fine. i read through a bunch of threads on here about some of the common culprits for the leaks...my sunroof drains are all fine. i then sealed the whole car up and took turns inundating different areas of the car to see if it would replicate the leak.

turns out when i hit the grille/vent under the passenger side of the windshield, it causes a box towards the firewall on the passenger side of the shifter console area to leak pretty heavily. i haven't dug into my bentley yet, but i'm assuming it's part of the heater/AC system.

when i popped the hood, there was also a puddle in the front battery tray area (my battery is in the rear, it's a 90 325i).

so my question to you guys is what do you think the issue is, does anyone have any experience with this particular problem, and where's a good place to start?

i'm going to dig into my bentley and keep digging up threads in the meantime.

thanks!

the machine in question:

[scott_is]

There is a drain tube right in front of the heater box on top of the tranny
tunnel. Remove your center console you should see it. Check if the little
rubber elbow is connected... might be cracked too. It might also be the
grommet for the battery cable or the ac lines if the water gets to the battery
tray. These are easy to check I would start there.

Scott

[8380 Labs]

is the drain tube pretty thick, like 3/8" and goes down into the tunnel? i looked at it but it didnt look like the culprit so i didn't investigate it much. the grommet in the front battery tray makes sense, i'll take care of that one.

i found a pic of my trouble areas:



the circle is where there is some kind of little fold in the metal that looks like some kind of drain as well, it drips steadily, and appears to be responsible for a large part of the water. as i was working on ripping the dash apart, hours after the car was wet down it was still leaking steadily from this area.

the square represents the condenser box i think. i pulled the glovebox and plastic shielding on the side of the dash, and can see AC lines coming through the firewall, then along the back of the glovebox area, directly down into this box. i removed the torx bolts to pry the front open to see what was in there, and it is a bunch of coiled up AC lines and junk, so condenser was my assumption...it appears water is building up in there and dripping from the front corner (closer to rear of car).

it's been rainy here lately, which would explain all the water (it's been in a garage all winter so this hasnt been an issue til now. i also tried the AC for the first time and it doesn't blow cold, but also makes the engine rev really high, especially when it's in nuetral, so i don't know if this is another factor.

sorry for the novel, i'm just hoping for some more insights. the car is sitting and drying out with the interior ripped out and i'd like to get the problem tucked away this weekend.

[RidingSimple]

I also had a water leak from the same area (passenger footwell coming from area you circled in red). It was a drain tube that exits right behind the motor, but still in the engine bay. It is a elephant snout looking rubber piece with (of all things) a small tapered end that (in my case) was 99% clogged with dirt. I yanked it off and tested putting hose water in the plastic vent covers by the wipers and water poured out of this hole (and NOT in the passenger footwell, yay!), cleaning out some more dirt. The elephant snout shaped piece is off my car now since taking it off cracked the mount a bit, but it is not needed since water still comes out the drain hole when introuduced up top by the wipers.

That seems to be a common problem, which has nothing to do with the leak coming from inside the car, it just backs up and has nowhere else to go.

Hope that helps a bit.