Body Drain???
 

Hello everyone. I'm new to the forum. Stumbled on it by accident and already received some helpful information on one of many problems with my 94 C280. Right now with all of the rain here in Northern Va these past few days the leak that I've had for years had reared its ugly head in the worst way. The leak in coming from the passenger side under the dash. I've had the body drain done twice on this vehicle and it still continues to have the same problems.

Carpet is soaked!! I had to remove it and dry out the floor of the car from all the rain we've had. Seems no one really wants to touch it and someone said it might be the windshield. Anyone else have body drain problems or could this be something else? Would love to know how to repair myself.

I'm a female and I'm not afraid of dirty hands. Thanks.

It sounds like the drain on the water collector is clogged. The water collector is where rainwater goes after it runs down the windshield. The outlet is on the passenger side, near where the battery used to be on older MB's. All you need to do is open the hood to the straight-up position, and look down below the area of the hood hinge. You'll find the drain outlet here. There's a rubber flapper thingy that gets clogged up periodically, attached to the outlet of the water collector. Don't try to un-clog it, just pop it off with a long screwdriver and forget about it.

Where abouts in NOVA do you live. I live close to Manassas and could get your car on a lift and inspect it, I'm taking courses at NVCC Manassas.

I just had the same problem, I'm in maryland.

what I did was remove all that plastic trim below the windshield in the engine compartment.

There was pulled water in the cavities, i use a mity-vac to draw off the water then vacuumed the leaves out to open the drain.

The cavity that filled was just in front of the trap door that sits above the blower motor for the HVAC.

I would also remove the panel under the glove box, take off the plastic panel (held on with slides ) under the blower, also replace the cabin filter which is beyond a seperate slide mounted cover.

There is a post on this forum or was it at www.mbca.org that had photos of the plastic trim below the windshield that needs to be removed.

In my case, and it seems for you also this isn't an issue with the sunroof drain or the plug in the rocker panel just aft of the passenger side wheel - though that plug should be probed or removed and then replaced after feeling for any debris.

If you need step by step instructions and you have the proper tools respond back.


As Ilumvils mentioned -my technique is a bit different- if you pop off part number 202-831-01-58 which is a SCREEN AIR grid just to the left of the mono-wiper and rest on the windshiled (there is a drivers side screen opposite), it will give you access to the cavity that gets clog. I found I needed to remove the engine width trim underneath that (held on with ten screws I THINK ) to vacuum out the debris, The second panel is a bit tricky because you need to remove an overlapping particl disc that fits under the mono-wiper arm base.

My car is a 1998 C230, if you post a picture of the wiper area here, I'll confirm if it is just like my C-class - same body as yours.