On our last road trip we had the duct work dumping quite a bit of condensation on our feet as we were driving.
Is this clogged evaporator drains or something else? Where should I be looking? Just the drains behind the front tires?
Clogged drains. Get under the car and look up at the underside of the floor either side of the gearbox directly above the XYZ switch. On each side you'll see a conical bit of rubber, looking a bit like a limpet, give it a squeeze and you will be rewarded with a sleeve full of muddy water.
thank you, sir.
now I have something to do tomorrow.
When working properly, on a humid day, there is so much water comes out from under the car people will point out you've a water leak. I've had concerned people point out the trickle of water coming out from under the car when I've stopped for fuel!
Gilbertd wrote:
When working properly, on a humid day, there is so much water comes out from under the car people will point out you've a water leak. I've had concerned people point out the trickle of water coming out from under the car when I've stopped for fuel!
A few years ago I had a guy at a petrol station in Wales flag me down as I was leaving to point out the water pouring down under the car.
Just yesterday my wife noticed her bag & the carpet in our RHD passenger footwell was damp. It's got to be the A/C drain as it hasn't been out in the rain for weeks & I just recently got the A/C recharged. Guess I will be lying underneath getting an armful of muddy water later. I have found that you need to get a screwdriver or piece of stiff wire up into the rubber limpet with a cross cut in it to get out whatever is blocking it. The rubber end of the drain is supposed to act as a one way valve to allow water out but as it gets blocked so frequently with road crud I'm not sure that it wouldn't be better if the drainage tube wasn't open ended without the valve action so that it couldn't get blocked.
climbed under the Range Rover today and cleaned out the drains. both were dry and clear as far I could tell.
but, now I have no way to test since the compressor has decided to stop kicking on.
I've checked all the fuses and they are all good. condenser fans do kick on. i did pull the clutch plate off and remove one shim. that's assuming the shims are the small washers inside clutch plate shaft. now the clutch plate spins with the vibration of belt moving. did I remove the wrong shim?
You should have an air gap between the clutch plate and the compressor pulley of 16 to 30 thou so if it is too small there will be some drag causing the compressor to turn even if it hasn't engaged. If the compressor isn't kicking in, you may be low on refrigerant so the pressure switch is preventing it from engaging, you have a bad connection at the pressure switch or at the multiway connector behind the RH kick panel. As you've got a Thor it will have the additional relay so your HEVAC won't give you the book symbol. Earlier cars didn't have the relay so the HEVAC could detect how much current was being drawn by the clutch and bring on the book. With the relay, it cannot detect if the clutch has engaged or not.
If the drains were dry, it may be that the tubes have become dislodged. If you take the centre console side panels off you will see the convoluted hoses that connect between the underside of the heater box and the top of the drains. It isn't unknown for these to become dislodged so rather than the condensate going out the drains it dribbles inside the car.
You can easily live without the stupid "valves" on the ends of the discharge pipes. I've removed them years ago and never had an issue. I also got rid of the ones in the sunroof drains, another point of trouble worth checking if you haven't done so in a long time.
About the A/C drains, I've found while putting back together the interior, something in between my heater box and the floor of the car has "moved out of alignment", and the rubber connector between the box and the floor makes a bit of a 'kink', reducing a bit the available space for condensation to flow away from the box. I tried and tried and tried to put them in line but was impossible, the heater box is tight against its fixings and the floor hole ... well you can't move it :-)
Well, I know it and if I see an occasional drop or two of water overflowing, I live with it.
You may want to check the alignment on yours, before getting worried! :-)
The valves are there to stop water coming into the car if you are wading through deep water as they act as a (pretty crude) one way valve. So doing away with them is OK if you never into going through deep water. But the way the weather in different parts of the world is going, you may never know when you will find a flooded road......
You are correct, the technical theory is there.
But for one in a million chance to find yourself in a sufficiently high flooded place, you got the all in all chances of being hassled by the stupid one-way valve...
I've been to the sills in water, and no issues. Higher than that, I would strongly try to avoid ... remember the BeCM sits lower than where the drains from the heater box start!!! :-)
When I did the off road course at Land Rover, they said midway up to the headlights was the limit, as soon as it came over the front of the bonnet, it was too deep. I wouldn't fancy trying it in mine but I did in a Discovery on what they referred to as the Jungle Track.
Interesting indeed!
I guess it also counts the "time" spend wading/passing through.
I had once to cross a flooded road with my Classic (sigh), and it went up mid-doors, felt it "lighten" but I made it through those perhaps 20-30m.
No water came in. Perhaps lingering for more time would have been problematic ...
The secret when wading is the speed you go through at. If you hit it at WRC speed, you will drown it, you drive at the speed where it creates a bow wave in front of you and follow that. Too slow and things start to fill up with water, too fast and it will drown.