Cowl help needed please.

[flyboy01]

Ok, I am totally confused. 

I have a ton of pine needles stuck in my cowl under the vents, I have the fenders and the hood off, but I can't figure out how to get access to this area. I tried to blow it out with compressed air, but some of the stuff isn't budging. All I see are the two holes in the sides and the slats in the top. Am I missing something? Everything appears to be welded together.

[Jim_Lusk]

Remove the heater box and the driver side vent assembly. Then it's a matter of cleaning out what you can by hand and flushing the rest out with water.

[Duster440]

Remove the heater box and the driver side vent assembly. Then it's a matter of cleaning out what you can by hand and flushing the rest out with water.

Employ someone with pygmy sized hands and arms to reach up in there. No offense to pygmies.

[eldubb440]

heres your other alternative 

[75Dart440]

It's gonna be tough to get them all out if they have been decomposing in there for years.  They sorta turn to a clay like mass and get down into the seams where the panels are spot welded.  I had to repair a rust area behind the ballast resister on my Dart Sport, and thus removed a panel about as large as your fist.  I spent some time with compressed air and a piece of wire loosening the leaves and blowing them over to the opening that I had cut where I could remove them by hand.  The Dart has factory air and does not have the fresh air vents like my 73 Duster had.

Maybe try a coat hanger wire through the side drain holes while using a shop vac (set to blow) on the cowl vent.

[flyboy01]

I guess I am going to have to pull the heater box and see what I can dig out. The wire trick might work also. On a side note, does anyone know if the vin plate is part of the dash assy? Will it come out if I pull the whole dash?

[Jim_Lusk]

If you remove the entire dash the VIN will come with it.

[Freight Dog]

Try going in through the mount for the wiper motor.

[abodyjoe]

we just cut windows in the cowlunder the hood and cleaned it out...    if you use a thin wheel you can weld it right back and no one will ever notice.

[acpat]

put a straight spray nozzle on a garden hose and go in through the wiper. keep shoving it around while someone else cleans the drain on each side of the cowl. My belvedere 66 has one on each side. I sprayed from the top vents and got it all but it took a couple hours

[moparrr07]

this kinda sounds like bad advice but it seriously works, go up to about 90-100 mph and open the vents, and those needles blow out of there like nobodies business, kind of hurts though when they hit you, wear some biker goggles

i have cleaned them out before and they just end up coming back, haven't even been by any pine trees

[flyboy01]

this kinda sounds like bad advice but it seriously works, go up to about 90-100 mph and open the vents, and those needles blow out of there like nobodies business, kind of hurts though when they hit you, wear some biker goggles

i have cleaned them out before and they just end up coming back, haven't even been by any pine trees

Ummm.......no.

[flyboy01]

I had another idea related to the wire. I figured I can rig an 1/8" metal tube to the end of my blow gun and stick it down through the vents to stir up and blow out the needles.

[acpat]

cap the end of it and drill holes on the sides and blow baby blow.

[dusterdarryl]

it took me quite a while but I got the duster cleaned out, man there sure is some c#*p that comes out, then I started pouring trands fliuf down the vent at the top, just a little at a time, it acts like an anti rust thingy

[loiq]

this kinda sounds like bad advice but it seriously works, go up to about 90-100 mph and open the vents, and those needles blow out of there like nobodies business, kind of hurts though when they hit you, wear some biker goggles

i have cleaned them out before and they just end up coming back, haven't even been by any pine trees

Ummm.......no.

 

[CudaDon65]

Remove the heater box and the driver side vent assembly. Then it's a matter of cleaning out what you can by hand and flushing the rest out with water.

.It's a lot of work and when you get done use some rust converter.

[flyboy01]

this kinda sounds like bad advice but it seriously works, go up to about 90-100 mph and open the vents, and those needles blow out of there like nobodies business, kind of hurts though when they hit you, wear some biker goggles

i have cleaned them out before and they just end up coming back, haven't even been by any pine trees

That really sounds like something the "That thing got a Hemi" guys would do before they crash their Duster, goggles and all.    

[moparsky]

Hi "FlyBoy01", 
     Ole "Eldubb440" had the ultimate idea, take the cowl apart (I can't imagine how much work that would be -- easy for me to suggest ain't it) & clean that baby out completely, fix whatever rust you find, do your thing; Evaoprust it, encapalte it & ect -- all that great work you have been doing so far on other parts of the Dart. You might regret not doing down the road. Just a thought dude. Every time I turn my heater blower motor on I hear the fan blades htting ancient leaves way down inside the beast.
     I am a B-body owner, so I have never seen what the fresh air bowl / hole looks like under the dash on the bottom of the cowl, once you get you heater box out maybe you can reach up inside most of the cowl box from either bowl underneath the cowl ?

[flyboy01]

The cowl on these cars is welded on, and is the bottom lip of the windshield frame and goes all the way down to the "seam" underhood. Since there is no rust in my cowl, only in need of cleaning., it would not make sense to remove it. When I say this car is rust free, I mean only light surface rust. The only 2 rust spots on the whole car were the left rear quarter which had a mud wasp nest, and that was only a 1/4" hole, the other side had an old piece of fuel line jammed in which cause it to rust exactly where it was touching. The rest of the car is solid. So I am NOT cutting the cowl out to get rid of pine needles. 

One thing I have been playing with has been a wire stirring up the needles, then using air to push them to the corners, where I use my finger to pull them out the drain holes. I am also going to try using my shop vac by duct taping the end to the weep holes in the side and pushing the junk out to the sides. If that don't work, I still need to pull my dash out anyway to repaint it and do the custom gauges, so I can see what I can get out that way.

[MyCreation68]

heres your other alternative 

how hard is that to do? I'll have to do this to and that looks like the best bet to me. maybe even sealing the cowl permanently.

[eldubb440]

heres your other alternative 

how hard is that to do? I'll have to do this to and that looks like the best bet to me. maybe even sealing the cowl permanently.

gotta have the dash and windshield out......drill spot welds along windshield seam and along the top of the fire wall seam. the bottoms of the posts are a lead joint; i just melted out the lead and cut with a cutoff wheel. the removal and install is  pretty simple if the car is apart. i didnt separate mine at the top of the firewall,  i cut it where it dips behind the hood; it warped a little welding it back up which is why id  separte it at the firewall next time

[75Dart440]

I have mine cleaned out pretty good.  It had a lot of oak tree leaves in it.  I am tossing around the idea of putting a coffee can full of walnut shell in the cowl and covering all of the exit holes and blasting it around inside with a compressed air blow tip to loosen any surface rust.  Then pour rust encapsulator down into the cowl from above and use a wire with a small sponge fastened to it, to swab the paint around as best I can from the side drain holes and from the louvers above.  Probably not going to get everything, but it can't hurt.

Removing the cowl and re-welding it back on is a very time consuming job, and my car isn't going to see much water other than an occasional car washing or getting caught in a surprise rain shower.

The floor of the cowl is actually a very thick piece of steel.  Almost an 1/8 th inch thick.  I have removed them before on race cars, using a plasma cutter.  Your cowl would have to be in really bad shape to have the floor of it rust out.  The key here is to get the joints where the thinner sheet metal of the firewall and cowl sides where the door hinges come together, cleaned and seal them against future water/rust formation. 

[flyboy01]

I am thinking that if you can get your arm in the interior vent holes, you can probably get a foam paint roller in there with some encapsulator.

[CudaDon65]

With the vent box and heaterbox out I sprayed rust encapsulator. Then I used a brush too. I'm not sure if I got it all but I think I got most of it.

[4spdfury]

why dont you haul it to canada and have them chemically dip it for the rust, and then theres a place that will dip it  with a chemical that will keep it from rusting again.

[70dart408]

definitly try and get out as much as possible or it
could get like this