I just saw this thread for the first time...the pictures show the patch under the plastic piece under the wipers. I raised up my plastic piece on my '09 while looking for "rattle" sources, as well as a wind "whistling" source, and saw no rubber patch there...just an exposed hole with my cabin filter in it. I thought you guys said that the '8's and later had no hole there? Mine has never leaked, but WTF? Do I need to put a patch over that hole?

 

Might be a matter of engineering, if it isn't leaking. Mine is an '06, and while I haven't popped the panel out yet, I'm virtually certain that's the problem, since I washed the car yesterday and rinsed it pretty thoroughly.

 

Holy crap on a popsicle. I actually fixed something on my car.... and it was the right fix! (I'm not-so-fondly remembering a Ford I once had... chased a gremlin until I got sick of it and gave it away)

The patch had dropped completely into the air box, though the material was still in good shape... such as it is. I applied some 3m adhesive out of my airplane tool kit and pressed it back into place for now, using a few strips of my precious aircraft chafe-tape to reinforce the newly cleaned edges and sheetmetal surrounding it. I'll fab up a new piece from sheet aluminum later.
The cabin air filter was... brown. It wasn't soaked, and I didn't see much more than a light water stain on the right floorboard... which could have been caused by wet shoes, no dampness and no musty odor. When I ordered the resistor, I went ahead and grabbed an air filter, just in case, and I'm glad I did. It went in easily through the glove box, and while the resistor was one of the quickest things I fixed today, it didn't do my arthritic self much good getting to it. Ask me about the vacuum filter on a Cessna 172 some time... whew!

So... I waited a little bit for the adhesive to set, and tested the blower while driving Herman back into the garage. Worked on all speeds, and even smells better!
Huzzah!

Thanks for all the tips I found here, by the way.

 

Good deal man. Glad it worked out for you. :-) Replacing the patch with a piece of aluminum is something I've been planning on as well. Did you take any measurements to figure out how big a piece you will be needing?

 

When the time comes, I'm just gonna use the current part as a template. I may make changes in the final part if I think it'll help.

 

Good stuff. yeah, I was going to use the original as well for the template - was just wondering about the dimentions, but I should check my stock of sheet aluminum before I start tearing it all apart, and make sure I got a big enough piece.

You may already be aware of this trick, but if you heat the sheet aluminum up with a bit of heat - and not super hot even - you can take the temper out of it, and make it much more malable to form it to the cowl. A propane torch works well for that.

 

Using oxyacetylene, run a "dirty" carbonizing flame over the sheet until you have soot on the entire surface you want to shape, then adjust your flame back to neutral and "burn" the soot off. You'll end up with a nicely annealed, clean piece of sheet aluminum. We used that trick a lot when replacing panels on airplanes. Propane works as well, but the soot trick was a nice way of ensuring a nice, even anneal.

 

yeah, that's it - thought you might be aware of it.

You still in the plane maintenance business these days? A buddy of mine is the chief maintenance guy for a corporate jet - he loves the work - always something new he says.

 

now, WHY didn't GM either leave that "hole" out of the engineering scheme in the first place or, simply make the patch out of metel themselves.....makes ya wonder. oh well........

 

I loved the airplanes, didn't care much for our hangar manager though. It's been a few years since I was in the thick of it, working on stuff from 2 seat Katana trainers up to King Airs.

As for why the hole... seems like engineers and designers sometimes just have these brain farts. The aforementioned Katana was really easy to maintain... unless you had to adjust the rudder cable tension. That 5 minute job took at least a few hours, since the only way to access the turnbuckles required removal of the fuselage fuel tank.