I am posting this in the Panda section because I know some of you take your Pandas seriously and want to keep them for a long time. I have a 2004 Punto which seems to have a similar construction? I was surprised today after I had driven about 15km round trip in -5C on snow covered roads and had the car in the garage and jacked it up onto jack stands, that there was water dripping from both sills through the sill drain holes and from some of the sill plastic plugs. The whole of the bottom of the car was otherwise completely dry. The wheel arches had melting snow. I have plastic splash guards front and back. I am assuming this is no connection between the wet wheel arches and the wet sills. Each end of the sills looked totally dry inside the plastic guards. I have recently repaired small rust holes in the rear wheel arches and I have had a look inside the sills where there is a considerable amount of rust on the bottom of the outer sill in the rear half of the sills. The front part of the sills appears to be in good condition. The car is kept in a dry garage so I am assuming this corrosion is being caused by condensation.
So what to do about this? I know there are a few ways the pressurised warm humid cabin air can reach the sills. There are a few small openings front and back and then in the middle the door pillar has this plastic bag under the seat belt mechanism with foam in it and there are some air gaps there. There is a sill inspection hole? in the rear passenger area on both sides - I am assuming that was put there by the factory.
I have not recently checked that air opening valve thing behind the rear bumper.
I suppose it makes sense that a small amount of water will always be getting into the sills and condensing in cold weather when the cabin air is warm and I am breathing. The windows however were not fogging. The car has snow 'buckets' for your feet front and rear. There is no rust at all under the carpets or anywhere on the underside of the car other than at the sills, the rear bumper brackets and the rear subframe under the springs.
Has anybody here experienced this before?
Edit: I suppose i can test this by putting a tube in the sill and seeing what happens to the inside of a glass jar that is outside the car. It must fog up to some extent. Just recently I went into an underground shopping car park and it took me a while to realise the *outside* of the windows had very quickly totally fogged up.
So what to do about this? I know there are a few ways the pressurised warm humid cabin air can reach the sills. There are a few small openings front and back and then in the middle the door pillar has this plastic bag under the seat belt mechanism with foam in it and there are some air gaps there. There is a sill inspection hole? in the rear passenger area on both sides - I am assuming that was put there by the factory.
I have not recently checked that air opening valve thing behind the rear bumper.
I suppose it makes sense that a small amount of water will always be getting into the sills and condensing in cold weather when the cabin air is warm and I am breathing. The windows however were not fogging. The car has snow 'buckets' for your feet front and rear. There is no rust at all under the carpets or anywhere on the underside of the car other than at the sills, the rear bumper brackets and the rear subframe under the springs.
Has anybody here experienced this before?
Edit: I suppose i can test this by putting a tube in the sill and seeing what happens to the inside of a glass jar that is outside the car. It must fog up to some extent. Just recently I went into an underground shopping car park and it took me a while to realise the *outside* of the windows had very quickly totally fogged up.
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