My 99 CRV has a water leak coming from behind the dash on the passenger side when it's raining. I pulled the glovebox and carpet, and got under there while running water over the side of the car. It seems to be trickling into the vent above the blower and dripping onto the carpet. It also seems to be running behind the blower, under the sound deadening material, and ending up in the floor pan. It drips from the vent regardless of whether it's set to recirculate or not, but I know that the vent is opening and closing.

I don't think that it's actually the outside air vent leaking. Rather, I think that water is getting in through a bad weld joint inside the cowl and running down the inside of the firewall, where most of it is ending up in the blower and dripping down. I've heard of that problem on Civics before, and the CRV looks very civic-ey under the hood.

Does anyone know how to take the cowl off without breaking anything? I tried prying on the little plugs, but couldn't get them to pop, and I thought I'd ask before I tear the whole thing up. Also, does anyone know how to get the wiper arms off, because I need to do that to get the cowl off. I pulled the bolts that seem to hold the wipers on, but the arms wouldn't come off easily.

If it is a bad weld joint, I'm planning on just JB welding it to make it watertight. After buying this car, I'm starting to see more and more evidence that the "minor" collision indicated by Carfax wasn't so minor.

 

That's pretty normal on crvs. You just have to pop the clips on the cowl and take it off (take the wiper arms off too)

 

removing the cowl is pretty straight foward remove wiper arm and clips and its off..but before you do that...make sure when water is entering the vent is set on recirculate and fan off...as this is 90% of all complaint from 97-01 crv owner have and thats the fix. when you have the vent on fresh and fan on water draws in that way.

 

interesting... Mine's doing it on recirculate AND fresh. Even when it's on recirculate, it's still dripping around the flapper thing. When it's on fresh, it's even worse.

I guess I just didn't try hard enough to pop the clips. I'll probably mess with it again when I get home tonight.

 

I just got this same problem fixed on my 99. Actually I had a new windshield put in a month ago at GlassMasters and it started leaking (pouring) after they put the windshield in. They apparantly loosened the cowl to put the glass in a screwed up the foam seal around the air box under the cowl. After 23 days they finally got the district manager to come look at it and he fixed the problem in 30 minutes by using butyl tape (non hardening sealer tape stuff like a weather seal) as the seal. I told them to do that 2 weeks ago, but no, they knew better.

 

Well, I pulled the cowl cover off last night. While I was looking at it, I found that the part of the firewall behind the battery was actually sticking OUT from under the cowl cover, so there was about a 1/4" gap. I think that was problem #1. I pounded it out flat.

After I got it off, I poured some water into the cowl, and found that it was seeping into the wall around the blower opening. I caulked it up and put it all together again.

Hopefully this will fix it all.

 

to clarify. if you leave the CRV vent on "circulate " when parked it will not seep in? assuming this would be the same while driving in the rain.

I would much rather do this than pull the whole from off. I am having a hard time understanding the other fix solutions. I hope I am understanding your post correctly.