I recently purchased a Peugeot 207 and noticed that when I turned a corner I could hear a sloshing water sound coming from the dashboard.
I had heard this previously on the test drive and had mentioned it to the dealer but he told me that they had jet washed the car shortly my arrival and the sound was just residue water left in the drains.
He reassured me it would not last long (and why wouldn’t you trust a used car dealer !).
However after a week I was still hearing water moving around in the car and since it had been raining the water volume sounded like it had increased. I looked around online and all I could find were forums saying that the problem is likely to be a blocked drain underneath the scuttle (the grill located under the windscreen).
I am a total novice when it comes to car repair, with the extent of my knowledge being able to drive and fill the car with petrol, therefore, I was looking for some clear instructions and some pictures to help me investigate. Despite a lot of googling I was unable to find a tutorial so I thought I would try and fix it myself and if I was successful I would post the results online to help fellow drivers that have encountered the same issue.
Solution 1
The drain that was blocked on my car was on the passenger side and I realised (unfortunately after completing solution 2) that the drain could probably have been unblocked by using a wire coat hanger strategically fed through the scuttle and into the drain. See picture right.
Solution 2
If trying to unblock the drain by feeding a ‘tool’ through the scuttle does not work you will need to remove a few items to access the drain below. This is quite a fiddly job but it is not difficult.
| 1. Open the bonnet - On my car the handle to open the bonnet is in the passenger footwell. |
2. Remove the caps on the wiper arms - Use a flathead screwdriver and remove the caps that are over the nuts on the wiper arms
3. Remove the nuts - Once the nuts are exposed use a ratchet and socket or a large spanner to remove the nuts.
4. Mark wiper arm position - Use some nail varnish to mark the spindle and the blade arm to show the position that the wiper arms are currently in. This is an extremely important step because if you don’t do this once the work is done and you reattach the arms they might be in the wrong position and will not function correctly.
5. Remove the wiper blade arms - Depending on how often and recently the arms were removed it may be that you are not able to just lift them off. In my case they were completely stuck so I used a large spanner and placed one edge on the spindle and the other edge underneath the wiper arm and tightened. If you rotate the spanner upwards from this position it provides just enough in the leverage to free up the arm for removal.
6. Remove rubber protectors - Once the arms are removed you need to remove the rubber protectors around the outside of the arms. These should come out quite easily just by pulling them but if they do need a bit of help just gently prise them out with a flathead screwdriver.
7. Remove the scuttle to expose the drain - Now comes the fiddly part-removing the scuttle. There are no specific clips to hold the scuttle in place but it can be tricky to remove because you have to free it up in stages. The way I did it was to unclip the left side then the right. Then unhook it all the way along the front before finally wiggling it around until it popped out of the groove along the back edge by the windscreen.
8 . Unblock the drain - As you can see from the picture a puddle of water has formed over the top of the drain and it is this water that I could hear sloshing around.
In order to clear the blockage I pushed my finger down the hole and the water just poured out the bottom. I used clean water to swill around the area to remove any other debris that could block the drain in the future.
9. Replace the scuttle - Again this was very fiddly because you have to get the left and right sides over the foam panels and then make sure the groove at the back of the scuttle fits snugly against the windscreen. On my car it was difficult to get the scuttle back into this groove so I had to apply a bit of brute force by pressing down on it as hard as I could and eventually by working my way along the length of it I managed to click it all into place. Once I clipped the front edge back in it clicked in even further and the edges were all restored.
10. Replace rubber mouldings - Place the rubber mouldings back into the holes around the wiper arm spindles.
11. Replace wiper arms - Get your wiper blade arms and line the nail varnish marks back up and push the arms back onto the spindle. Once you’re happy these are in the correct position at the nut and tighten.
12. Replace the caps – Add the caps back onto the nuts and the entire job is complete.
It has now been two weeks since I did this, I have experienced heavy rain in that period and that there has been no further water sounds coming from the car. Now I have seen the location of the drain and know how to get to it if the problem does occur in the future I will probably try Solution 1 first however now that I know how easy it is to do this job I wouldn’t hesitate to do Solution 2 again if I needed to.
Hopefully this has been helpful for you and please leave a comment below to let me and other readers know how you got on.
