This story is for all C5 owners. I read through this forum looking for performance upgrades as well as do it yourself projects. More people, including myself, need to learn about some of the basic maintenence. If you don't feel like reading the whole thing, then skip to the end, but everyone needs to know this. So, here the story goes.
It all starts off with my girlfriend noticing a little drip of water hitting her foot when the ac was on. I checked it out and there was no smell or anything. No big worry, just water condensing from the ac. Soon after that we take off for a rugby tourney 4 hours away. The drip continues, no big deal. We get there, my team wins the tourney (had to throw that in). I get in the car to head back and it dies a couple of times in the parking lot as I try to take off, then it does just fine. We get 30 miles or so down the road and decide to stop and get some food. When we return to take back off, a message comes up on the car's computer, "service column lock" . My girlfriend and I both get on our phones and scour the forums looking for how to fix it and head back. We find out that there was a recall on the problem and obviously the previous owner didn't get the fix done. I try all the tricks I could find. While pulling out some fuses in the passenger compartment, I notice that everything in there is completely soaked. This was no little leak. Nothing we tried worked. My friends and mechanics had no other ideas. I had no real choice other than calling a tow truck. $515 and 4 hours later, we were back in St Louis and I had already ordered the part to fix it. Three days later(July 1), the part comes in. Surprise, it didn't work. I quickly got on the phone with the nearest Chevrolet dealership and they tell me that it is a common problem and that I could get it in that day, but there might not even look at it until the next(July 3). I only put the dates in there because it was pretty important to go see my family over the 4th of July. So, I call another tow truck($90), and get the car dropped off there. I'm so worried that it won't be done until after the weekend, but luckily I get a call the next day. They tell me that they can fix the problem but that I have a water leak that they will have to look at next time. So, I pay the bill, $50 for a burnt up relay, and $240 for labor. Fixing the water leak, no big deal. At least I'll have a running car to get back home. Armed with a coffee cup and a towel, we head out for another trip. The towel gets soaked the cup is useful apon acceleration. You would not believe how much water was coming out of this thing. With a few stops and some work, we kept the floor from being too wet. We made it back with the car running great. Once there, I pull all the wet parts and set them out to dry. Now I finally have some time to fix the leak. I pull all the plastic from under the passenger dash. The blower motor is completely full of water. I have no clue how it didn't short out and burn up, not to mention that I couldn't find what was clogged up. Back to the forums. I found where the drain was on the front of the firewall. I went out, pulled it off, and water ran everywhere. It was completely stopped up with gunk. Cleaning it out and putting it back on only took a couple of minutes. So, in summary, what happened was that the drain clogged up, flooded the floorboard and burnt up the relay. I've left out a few things since the story is long enough.
I learned two C5 lessons with the whole ordeal:
1) get the part to fix the "service column lock"
2) clean out your ac drain
Pass these on.

 

Wow, a lot $$$$ for a plugged up AC drain. Thanks for the heads up!


Does anybody have a picture of the AC drain location?

 

Where is the A/C drain?

What was it clogged up with?

 

 

 

Link to Bill Curlee's pictures of the A/C Drain tube!

The Pictures of the Actual A/C box drain are a little farther down in the thread. The whole thing is good tech reading though!

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c5-t...ak-checks.html

 

That's the one I was thinking of.

 

Expensive, but at least you got the problem solved.

 

Had a similar event to you but I'm a little bit more mechanically inclined. "F"ing idiots at CarMax sold my brother a 1999 FRC and they replaced the blower motor with a non-GM blower motor with no rubber seal

We drove up to Carlilse for the Corvette show and I noticed a couple of drops on the way up. Didn't think too much of either at the time.

Next day we went over to the show, spent the day seeing cars, etc... It was hot as heck. Jump into the car turn on the A/C get out of the fairgrounds and promptly break down in the middle of the road.

The DTC is going bonkers. Push the car off to the side of the road and roast for awhile wondering why the "h" we ever bought these dam things.

Run through the basics and then notice the floor on the passenger side is soaking wet. Saw a newspaper box and grabbed .50 cents and grabbed a few newspapers. Soaked up all the water, popped open the passenger foot well cover and ripped out the closeout panel and saw that the water was pouring out the blower box

Jammed a bunch of newspaper up in there, got the car started and drove to the auto store and bought (3) rolls of paper towels and asked them for a bunch of plastic bags. I packed the paper towels into the blower area and then stuffed the plastic bags over the top of the paper towels to form a barrier.

The bro and drove 150 miles home with the windows open and the A/C off. We made it home only to find out that our house had lost power due to the Verizon Fios people hitting our electric lines.

House was 115 + inside and the wife was screaming made along with my half crazed boxer. I was able to restore power to half of the house as only one of the two legs coming in was damaged. I hooked up a portable air conditioner and we closed the room doors..

Ordered some food and beverages and ate. PECO (utility company) finally arrived around 11:30PM and fixed the electricity around 5am.

The Bro and I then grabbed a more reliable car (Audi A6 TT 2.7) and headed back to our hotel room in Carlilse and sacked out for awhile.

Ended up replacing blower motor and letting carpet dry out over the next week.

It really sucks when this crap happens. Thank goodness it only cost around $150 to fix the problem and a few hours of my time.

I would look into getting AAA.


Sorry for the long reply, but you're not alone on these problems.

 

not to belittle all the problems you have had, but water dripping into the passenger compartment footwell is ALMOST ALWAYS caused by a clogged evaporator drain. been that way since they added a/c to cars, lol! NOW if you get the same problem on the DRIVER'S side, you have some real problems, lol!! (don't ask me how i know that one. fortunately it wasn't with one of the vettes, but a big time problem just the same.)

 

Bad Heater Core.

 

Had the same problem. Spiders made a nest in the drain tube. Leaked on to the BCM and shorted it out.

The GM recall did not fix the column lock issue. Make sure you buy a Column Lock Bypass (CLB) or you will likely get the message again and a bill for $1000.

 

Had my car inspected in May and asked the tech if he would remove the drain tube and snip the end off while he had it on the lift. Drains really good now.....