On Saturday morning I headed out towards Chicago. My journey started out on a beautiful, sunny morning. The temperature in Bowling Green was in the low 70s at 7:30am and it looked like the perfect day for a road trip. I was making good time but that quickly changed when I got to about 50 miles south of Indianapolis. The forecast called for thunderstorms but I had no idea what as about to hit. Keep in mind that up until this point my car has never been driven in the rain.
Notice the large hole in my hood, later to be filled again by my shaker. i really wasn't worried about the engine getting wet, because I have hosed down the LS6 in my RX7 many times and it has never complained. All of the connectors are water tight so a little water on the intake won't hurt.
In this next picture the rain line can actually be seen. See how the pavement in front of me is dry, but just up ahead the semi going in the other direction has the giant rooster tail of water behind it. The sky was about to open up on me.
The rain was unbelievable. With the wind gusting, it was actually raining sideways.
Then as if it wasn't raining hard enough, it started coming down in sheets.
More dirty little secrets about my car. It seems that it is not entirely water tight. After about 20 minutes of driving in the rain I noticed that both the driver's and passenger side carpet was soaking wet. I am not talking about just damp, but sopping wet. I suspected that the water was coming down the cowl and getting inside through the kick panel area. A few days ago I discovered that to be exactly the case. No names will get mentioned, but the passenger side cowl vent panel was installed by the same shop that installed my Vintage Air system. The panel where the hoses come through wasn't sealed against the body at all. Like I said before, the reputation of the shop doesn't mean s**t. It all boils down to that guy, making 15 bucks an hour, wrenching on the car.
In about a week I am going to drive the car from Chicago to Colorado for my (cough....cough...) 20th high school reunion.
Andrew