Water inside passenger compartment
 

Hi All,

I'm hoping you can help shed some light on a disturbing problem.

About a month ago, I noticed after a weekend of heavy rainfall, while driving the couple hundred miles back home, there was a sound like water gurgling behind the dashboard/center of the console and occasional spitting of water out of the A/C vents. Some drips onto the foot on the gas pedal too. I am not sure if the gurgling and occasional drips ever entirely went away, as we were having a lot of rainfall.

Then hurricane Irene came, in the early am on Sunday. Sunday afternoon my boyfriend got into the car and headed for the airport. When he came to a hard stop, he describes a sound as if a wall of water were coming at him (from behind the dash?) - he is hard of hearing and did not hear the sound I heard on the way home from PA, so this must have been loud - then the foot wells of the passenger compartment flooded with water. 3"-4" of water. The car stalled out once and restarted then stalled a second time and would not start.

We each bailed out as much water as we could and used some towels to try to dry the car. When I returned to the car the next day it seemed as though more water had seeped into the car. Still it would not start.

On Tuesday I towed the car back to my house. Water streamed from the car as he pulled it onto the flatbed. I bought an upright Bissel carpet cleaner with a wand and used the hand wand to remove 3 tanks of water. I did not even try to start it anymore.

On Saturday, when he removed the backseat, my boyfriend found standing water and he also found some more water in the footwell of the rear passenger side.

We took out the rubber piece that slides into the groove by the firewall and snaps onto the shroudy thing (if you know what I mean) to see if we could pull out some leaves. There was a chunk of leaves on the passenger side but I could not remove any significant amount of leaves from the drivers side. I have heard that there is some kind of drainage that can be interfered with if it gets clogged with leaves but where is it exactly and how does one tell if it is clogged? And would this account for all this water? I thought there should be drain holes on the floor boards?

The last time the car was too the shop, the guy removed the dashboard to tinker with the CEL - could something not have been replaced properly or something that could account for the water?

The "gasket" thing thing that goes around the filler tube or the gas tank tore off - is there any way that water could seep in through that?

Nothing was left open - sunroof and doors were all shut tightly. The back-back of the wagon and the tire compartment were free of water and the place with the least amount of water was the front passenger side foot well.

Oh, the car is a 1997 A6 Wagon Quattro. There is a CEL code in the system of P1505 for the idle stabilizer.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Sherry