Bailing out the car

[newshound]

I did that too on one of the citroens, for its last year of life

[Spike]

You should have impressed him with a show of conspicuous consumption.

[Jeff Layman]

My first car was a Vauxhall Viva HB. It had several holes in the floor which neither Vauxhall nor I put there. The HB was, however, a notorious rustbucket...

[The Other Mike]

If only things were always still so simple!

After the front to back wiring loom the carpets might be the very next thing fitted on the production line, often in one piece, and besides the obvious things like the seats removing the carpet might also entail the removal of much of the trim, centre console and mind boggling the removal of the dash, which then might mean the degassing of the aircon. A two minute install of a carpet on the production line can easily translate to 30+ hours of work at a dealer and 650 euros for the carpet.

One could for instance back a car into a location on a very sunny day, wind down a window to ease positioning of the car close to a wall and then accidentally leave that a window open for a day or two, with torrential rains overnight and then have a saturated seat and an inch or two of water in the footwell and then think it's an easy job to remove the carpets and then find the above situation. DAMHIKT :)

The running of a dehumidifier for a few weeks was the easiest option and while that dried things out there was an enduring stench of what resembled a cross between rotten milk and bubble gum coming from the carpets and seats. It's hopefully now fixed after lots of repeat applications of carpet cleaner and upholstery cleaner.

[Tricky Dicky]

Only had two leaks in a car, the first was a sun roof which I did not want for that reason but because it was a standard item on that model I had to put up with it. I cannot remember how much it cost but remember at the time it was done by a specialist company and I was pleased with the price and that it never leaked again. The second was the heater matrix on a Nissan Bluebird, what a PITA that was, everything had to come off the bulkhead the matrix itself was the very last thing. Even the steering wheel had to come off to remove the dash, despite having a puller to try to pull it off it would not budge so in the end I had to disconnect a support bracket for the steering column and drop the wheel down but because of the weight it became a real PITA to get back involving a lot of cussing and swearing and involving every deity I could call stopping just short of selling my soul to Old Nick. I was just glad I decided to do the job myself I shudder to think what it would have cost at garage rates with most of the cost going in removing and replacing everything on the passenger side of the bulkhead the repair itself was only a matter of minutes.

Richard

[fred]

Use a dehumidifier and a heater.The heater will draw out the damp and the dehumidifierer will handle it better.

On a side note my father once had a car that under the carpets in the back had a little port hole with a rotating sliding cover. Came in handy when he locked the keys in one time as he was able to poke a screwdriver up through this hole to unlock the door handle. Thjis was all probably circa 1950

[Andrew]

TOP GEAR Africa special.

Shoot a hole through the floor with a rifle or ?BB Cartridge in a 12 bore.

failing that, remove all the carpets, hopefully the rear ones are a separate section and leave the car on fast tickover with the heater set to recirculate to get the interior really hot, opening the doors occasionally to let the steam out.

[Andrew]

If you are parkedd off road, get the engine running, heater on full blast in recirculation mode (gets the inside even hotter) and the dehumidifier will work even more effectively.

[NY]

One of my cars came with a sunroof as standard; I wouldn't have chosen to have one. One morning I came to my car and found a circular hole in the glass, about 10 cm diameter, and melting blue "snowball" with a chemical smell near the gear lever. As I lived under the flight path for Heathrow, near Bracknell, I reckon it was a bit of chemical toilet overflow that had frozen and had then fallen off a plane and gone through the sunroof. Luckily the chemical smell went fairly quickly, and there was no lingering pee/poo smell ;-)

I was surprised that a car which had laminated glass for windscreen/rear window had only used toughened glass for the sunroof - so there was lots of glass "pebbles" all over the inside of the car. But then the chance of that window being hit by debris is much less than the front or rear windows.

[Brian Reay]

Just run the aircon- it, the cooling helps remove the moisture from the air.

[Chris Bartram]

IME, Minis don't need any help to develop holes in the floor :-)

[Steve Walker]

Believe me, while the odour of once damp carpet is bad enough, the odour of carpet that has been subjected to milk is in whole different league!

When our middle son was just old enough to hold a bottle and drink from it himself, he left a half-full bottle, teat down, in the hole in the seat that the centre rear seatbelt emerges from.

A few weeks later a part-full 6-pint bottle of milk was accidentally left in the boot for some time. While shopping, we returned to the car and heard a hissing in the boot. Before I could stop her, my wife prodded the bottle, which blew the cap off and exploded over the boot carpet :(

SteveW

[ARW]

VBG

[Fredxx]

I thought the floor pan was spot welded where the direction of overlap acted as a scoop for pumping water into the cabin?

The only Mini that didn't rust on the inside was one with no carpets!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

And they obviously didn't have seam sealer in those days. ;-)

[alan_m]

And even when seam sealer was used on the cars of 4 decades ago even a minor shunt could result in the seam(s) cracking open to trap water.