Well I finally got the carpet dried out. The carpet pad they use stays wet forever. I rolled back the passenger carpet and had a fan blowing on it for about 6 hours before it dried out. The padding under the blower housing was soaking wet also so I took this piece and placed it in front of a fan. Here is a pic of the trim panel:
The padding on this panel was soaking wet. This is what was dripping. When the fan or AC was running water was dripping from the padding in the upper left corner. I saw a few drips from the right side also, but just a few. My guess is that once this padding got wet enough it started dripping where I could see it.
So how did it get wet? This panel is mounted below the motor housing and above the drain line. See pic:
The AC drain line runs below this panel so the evaporator tank would have to fill up with enough water to back up into the motor and then spill out around the motor to get the panel wet. When I pulled this apart I did not find any water inside. Also, see the 4x4 controller sitting on my carpet, the top of this unit was wet and this is on the far right side away from the evaporator tank. My AC drain line was clear so I pulled it out and took a look inside the evaporator tank.
You can’t see via the pic, but the only thing in there was 1 dead fly. It was clean and had no water build up. When I reconnected the line and ran the fan, I could feel air blowing out the drain line so I have rule this out as a possible cause.
So where does this leave me? I have two working theories. Not the best theories, mind you, but they are the best that I can come up with. The source of the water either came from the sunroof or from the cowl.
My theories hinge on the fact that exactly 7 days ago I took my trunk to a new carwash. I recall sitting there watching the washer go back and forth and I was thinking this is the best carwash I have ever seen. It had something like six of these propeller like spinners each with 3 high pressure water jets that moved around the truck. These things were really high pressure and went back and forth about 4 times dumping buckets of water everywhere. It was really a nice wash.
Theory 1:
The high pressure from the carwash forced more water through the sunroof then the drain tubes could carry away and during the 7 days since the carwash it worked its way down into the dash and soaked the padding under the blower motor and then started leaking out.
Yeah this one is kind of a stretch. 7 days for the water to leak? No water on the headliner. This does not explain why water would start dripping when the fan was running or how water got into the blower motor itself.
I found water around the lip and in the air intake (the thing sticking out the left side).
Theory 2:
This one is more plausible. Instead of water getting in via the sunroof, water was forced into the cowl and directly into the blower housing. If you open the vent to allow outside are into the truck it’s a direct passage to the engine compartment. The only thing covering this is the plastic trim (cowl) that covers the bottom of the windshield. The pressure and amount of water from the carwash was forced into this opening and directly into the blower housing.
This could explain why water would drip only when the fan was running. Assuming water was somehow stuck in the motor or around the motor and it could not make its way down to the evaporator tank and out the drain line. Each time I ran the fan some of this “trapped” water would get pushed around and drip out onto the padding under the motor. After several days the padding was soaked and started dripping. This would also explain the trickling water sound I was hearing when the fan was running.
This seems, to me, to be the most likely cause. But this theory has a few problems. First, can water get into the cowl? Second it looks like the design of the motor housing is such that any water that did get in there would drain down into the evaporator area and then out the drain line. Third any water would have to pass through the cabin air filter and it did not look like it had gotten wet, but it could have dried. Forth, there does not seem to be enough space for water to get “trapped”. There is a few pockets inside the housing but nothing that would “trap” water in the quantity that would be need to soak the padding and then out and under the carpet.
But this is the best I can come up with. I will leave the dash apart of a few days and see if anything new happens.
Can anyone offer other suggestions?