Clogged Drain - This is an easy fix, however; Dakota's do not have a long hose but rather a small 1in hose coming out of the firewall.. Best advise get a piece of hose and a clamp, put it on there and use an air chuck to blow out the clog as done in this video. After you're done simply remove the hose or leave it on in the event you have to repeat this process at a later date. Hope this was helpful.
Every time the AC is used, the passenger gets wet feet. Since I mostly am just driving myself, its not a huge deal, but it is quite annoying to have to explain to someone why their feet are soaked after 25 minutes in my car.
I have read the complaints of owners that have my same problem. There seems to be no sure fix, what troubles me the most is Dodge has had this same issue for as long as I can remember. My Papaw always had a Dodge truck dated back to the 60's, and every model since then always had a BIG HOLE in the passenger side floorboard ??????? I honestly think that the Caravan {2002} had the same issue and there was a recall for this. What can you do?
The AC is leaking because the clogged drain. if Mopar knows of this problem and will not fix this, this will be the last mopar I buy, and that sucks because I use to love mopar products.
I started noticing the passenger side floor board being soaked for no good reason at the time and figured out it was coming from the A/C somewhere. I looked in my Haynes Repair Manual and it really didn't go into detail so I got on the internet and started looking things up and today I ran across this site and its nice to know other people are having the same problem too but this one is a pain in the ass for anybody.
Today I finally located the evaporator drain tube where it comes out of the firewall. Its hard to see and only sticks out about an inch and is behind a heat shield but at the edge of the heat shield so I bent back the heat shield alittle to where I could get something down into the drain tube. After trying several things, I finally took a coat hanger and managed to get it to go in the tube pretty far and moved it back and forth and around. When I pulled it out, I could see with a flashlight that the edge of the tube was wet so I thought maybe I did some good. Went and ran some errands and ran the A/C but I could still fill it wet at the bottom of the plastic housing like before so not sure now. I read some other postings here on the same problem and one of them said something about a gasket.
Anybody else got any ideas to try on this one? I'm sure now that I'm not the only one with this problem. Would like to here from ya.
This is a challenging problem to the home repairer, actually in the V6.
I couldn't find any conceivable way to clear the hose in or out of the firewall, if it is clogged, other than drilling the plastic housing described below and I haven't tried that.
It sounds like it is almost not repairable in the V8- fortunately I have the 6. First, I took up the floor trim, carpet, and cut away at the noise insulation on the floorboards to reveal the black plastic housing under dash that contains the hose somewhere inside of it...this otherwise inaccessible plastic housing is the part of it that carries the condensate outside of the firewall. Then I pumped ( this was a huge chore ) on 2 separate occasions a full 12 oz. of silicone in and around the leaking gasket. Very hard to access and apply evenly and I am not sure I have completely blocked the leak.
Worse yet, I can imagine condensate building up in the black plastic reservoir until..?
In retrospect, I would let the dealer fool with it; they obviously have a fix or routine of some sort which probably clears the line.
If doing myself, I think I would recommend that you bypass the current drain by drilling into the plastic housing and then through the firewall, then silicone a plastic tube out thru the firewall.
O.K. Dodge and Chrysler mechanics, what would you do?? Challenge Question.
Hope this helps,
Michael, in north Georgia...write me at mikesads(at) mailas.com
- Mike R.,
Dahlonega, GA, US
Search CarComplaints.com for these popular complaint phrases...
Apparently hose not accessible if equipped with V8, but accessible with V6. Real problem is the windshield fresh air vent allows debris to get past. Remove and epoxy glue fine mesh fiberglass screen on inside, like GM cars have.
I have had this fixed twice already and now dealership is telling me how to fix it because they are sick of seeing my truck in their shop every other month
Ac condenser drain clogged up so the floor got all soaking wet, so I am a mechanic for the most part and I looked and looked and I couldn't find the drain hose cause I have had them clog up over time on other cars and its easy to clean out. I gave up and took it to the dealer since they had a recall on the clunking front end (ball joints). Anyways they said the drain hose is not accessible because the motor is too close to the firewall. So either I had to have the motor pulled! or the dash pulled! They also told me that all V8 Dakotas and all V8 Jeep Cherokees and Grand Cherokees have the exact same problem. The only cheap fix other than $1,000 dollars to pull the dash or the motor was to drill a hole on the inside and clean out the drain from the inside, and then plugging the hole with epoxy, which is what I ended up doing.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
Every time the AC is used, the passenger gets wet feet. Since I mostly am just driving myself, its not a huge deal, but it is quite annoying to have to explain to someone why their feet are soaked after 25 minutes in my car.
- Craig S., DeMotte, IN, US