Mwveenhu said:
Alright. I was just curious. Because I opened it and shined a light
in there and I didn't see any venting inside that led outside and I
looked under the car and such and I didn't find anything...
The inner fender where this is installed hollow and connected to the air
intake grille at the base of the windshield. It continues down into the
rocker panels where rainwater drains out. Also air is forced through
the rocker panels by the car's motion and helps to dry them out after
the rainwater cleans them. Next time you're washing your car, spray
water down the grille and watch it flow out the rocker panel holes.
240s have these air vent holes on both sides, but since on the later
cars the fuel computer is mounted on the passenger side in front of this
area, that is blocked by a galvanized plate. Early ones had vents on
both sides.
740s have this feature too, but in all North American cars the holes are
filled with a plastic plug. Cars with the base heating system and no
computers have plastic vents in these holes, similar to the metal ones
in 240s. As an aside, the plastic plugs often get broken, if you have
water on the floor of your 740 after a rain storm, look at the condition
of these plugs.
--
Mike F.
Thornhill (near Toronto), Ont.
Replace tt with t (twice!) and remove parentheses to email me directly.
(But I check the newsgroup more often than this email address.)