I just found out that my vent cowl where the heater vent is rusted. My carpet is soaking wet with all the rain we been having. Now I got to fix the thing. I'm looking for a replacement for it and I thought autokrafters sold it?Didn't mustang use the same thing? If they don't have one who would? I did a temporay fix so it dosen't leak I hope until I can get it fix this summer.
hey mike thats a tough one , most mustang stores sell a plastic housing kit about 15.00 that goes inside and uses silicone sealer , i don't know of anyone that has had a permanent fix using it there are a lot of posts on this just do a search type COWL REPAIR
There are no replacement panels for our cars at all other than quarter skins. You will have to cut one out of a good car or if its not too bad, you can fabricate something yourself.
I went to autokrafters web site and found a cowl vent repair kit. I don't know what car it is for. Has anybody used one of those kits before? If so what kind of problems was incountered? My first posts I should have said cowl vent is leaking.
Those repair kits is the same as the Mustang ones. They treat the symptom rather than fixing the problem. Depending on how bad your rust is, it may or may not stop the leaking. Even if it does, the cowl will continue to rust and eventually start leaking again. There's only one way to fix it right and unfortunately, its a bitch.
Go to the FAQ section of maverick.to and look for the Cowl Vent Vent repair page.....it will answer all your questions.
OK guys one more question. I need to remove the sleeves and replace them cause there rusted. How are they put in? Are there slip on and sealed or are they spot weld. I did discover the major problem and thats at the base of the cowl vent there is a rust out portion about 1/4 inch long and I sealed it with two part glue. It seems it work so far. I'm going to wait until summer (less rain) to fix it right. I don't have a welder so I got awhile to figure out how to fix it to last. Just a thought. You guys this would be a good tech tip in the shorthorns for people who don't have a welder, but they need to do a proper job?
This repair was covered in "Shorthorns" awhile back. There is no real effective way of fixing this area without a welder. It can be fixed without a welder...but in my opinion it would be a temporary fix.
My 2 cents, I have sold a couple cowls to people that wanted to replace their rusted ones, be sure you know exactly what you are doing it is NO job for an amatuer!! Again that is my 2 cents
After giving some thought to this, I would suspect there would be an effective way to fix them without welding, prividing there is very minimal rust damage. If your rust is confined to the top hats themselves or right around the base where the verticle and horizontal metal meets, you could cut the top hat out from underneath, clean and seal the metal, then epoxy the mustang top hat repair kit in. I'd use that epoxy that they use to put panels on. Again, this would only work where there is very little rust damage and you would have to be able to seal up the remaining metal. I would not recomend welding from the bottom because you will burn off the paint in the cowl and the unprotected metal will start rusting immediately.
This exactly my problem. I have a small hole near the base of the top hat. I have been thinking more about this. If I cut the top hat out and prep and seal the inside of the cowl around the vent than either have someone make a metal top hat and weld it and reseal the inside that was weilded. There is enough room to get a paintbrush in, or get the repair kit and maybe fiberglass it. What do you think?
Have you looked at this Boyd's Mustang http://personal.ecu.edu/boydd/tech/cowl/cowl.htmlWhy worry with another top hat.Just weld in a solid piece afterall how often do you really use those vents.
if you go to the cameo club web page they have a great tech article on removeing the cowl top and sealing it with a flat metal surface. you would obviously lose your cowl venting but this repair would be easier than tearing the front end and dash apart to repair the bottom of the cowl. looks really cool also.
I've seen that mod in person. I think it looks cool but it will not keep all the water out. All the water that runds down the windshield ends up in the cowl. Plus around the wiper arm shaft is another source of water that ends up in there.
