I am asking on behalf of my sister. She has a 2002 Fabia 1.4mpi 8v, with about 35k miles. She has noticed water in the rear nearside footwell that she believes may be coming through an air vent. Apparently there seems to be some sort of association with the position of the heater control (cold - hot) with more water appearing, and also coolant loss, if set to hot. She was under the impression it could be a water pump or something?

Hopefully the above makes some sense? Just wondering what the problem is likely to be and how much it is likely to cost to put right.

Thanks in advance.

Hi mate, this could be a leaky door seal, there is a thread in this section with more information about this.

Cheers

Davy

You need to establish if its just water or actually coolant, ask her if its coloured, and has a distinct smell.

Ask if she is getting a sweet "taste" on her lips - the coolant is part glycol and any evaporating engine coolant will smell sweet and "taste" sweet - but don't try actually deliberately tasting it.

There is a problem with leaves collecting in the plenum chamber for the pollen filter on the air inlet for the vents - this blocks some kind of drain hole and rain water gets into the front passenger foot well. Maybe worth checking out. The symptoms are a bit confusing though as they show parts of several things but not conclusively one problem. Other things to check are the door seals or a loose connection in the washer fluid pipe for the rear wash/wipe. All of these faults should have dedicated fora on this site. If you are loosing engine coolant, check the oiler filler cap for an emulsion to see if you've got a head gasket problem?

The message above is almost sure to be what is wrong.

My old MPI did exactly the same thing every winter and just needs the drains hole unblocking. From memory, (don't have car any more) the drain hole is a rubber outlet, on the bulkhead, under the bonnet, nearer the near side of the vehicle. There is a thread on here somewhere with a photo.

Try searching plenum chamber or drain.

|When this first happened to me, The guy at my local skoda dealership unblocked it for me on the spot, free of charge (took 1 minute) and showed me how to do it for next time.

there are actually 2 drain holes, nearside and offside. to make matters worse, they don't even look the same!!