water on floorboard

hi - my van is a 1998 and has recently been pooling water on the driver's
floorboard, very near the door. dealer wants $800 to tear apart the front
end to find out why. if it is an "evaporator"(?), it will cost up to
another $500 to fix. is this an appropriate action to take or is there an
easier solution to the water draining in? we have noticed that there is
very little puddling/water drips on the driveway after driving w/the a/c
on (it's been about 103 avg here lately). thanks for all the help!!

 

Your air conditioner collects water from the air and has a drain tube to
let the water run out of the car. It sounds to me as if this tube is
most likely blocked. When this happens, the condensed water fills up
the air conditioning duct and runs out on the floor inside the car.
I'll bet that your dealer is eager to assign a mechanic to goof around
under the dashboard for half a day before simply removing the clog from
the line.

Here's how we fixed this problem on my sister's car, and it didn't cost
any money at all. We found the drain under the hood and jammed a piece
of flexible hose over it so that it made an airtight connection. Then
we jammed a larger piece of hose over the end of that hose, and then a
larger one over the end of that until the end of the series of hoses was
the right size to cram onto the fitting at the end of the Shop Vac
hose. When we got it all connected, we hit the switch and in about a
quarter of a second about half a gallon of water and the clog that had
been blocking it were inside the vacuum cleaner.