Inside front fender leaf debris

[BeyondMyMeans]

2024 RST PE. Wife noticed a leaf poking out of the bottom of the door jamb and as we inspected further discovered it was packed with leaves and dirt. I was very surprised to find that it's just a piece of very soft foam running the length of the door jamb. Easy to pull it up to get in there, just not a lot of clearance to get a shop vac hose in. Don't think it's coming from the fender liner, more like the cowl seal at the windshield.

Anyone else notice this? I'm thinking of maybe zip tying a fine mesh screen where the windshield literally drains to this hard to reach cavity. It would certainly look ratty, but better than the fenders rotting out.

(I'm trying desperately to upload pictures but either the forum or my phone is having issues)

Better plan might be to get some "gutter foam" and try to nicely stuff it down that cavity. That's probably going to be my next step.

 

[Big Mama]

There are really small attachments for shop vacs. Almost like a straw. My oil extractor has some. Do you best to keep it open. Some engineer somewhere decided it was needed. Realistically you’ll only do this a few times a year. Not sure what gutter foam is.

 

[BeyondMyMeans]

 

[BeyondMyMeans]

 

[BeyondMyMeans]

 

[BeyondMyMeans]

Having problems uploading pictures (I'm guessing they are too large, had to crop these ones down). Hopefully these make sense.

We'll see how well it works, but I only spent like $30 and it's certainly worth a try. I wracked my brain trying to figure out how to fill the void with gutter foam but realized that I didn't need the whole thing packed full, I just needed it to block the top. It should be easy enough to see if it's working as intended and just as easy to pull out and clean. Much better than wet leaves and dirt accumulating in the bottom of the fender and rotting it out over time.

 

[BeyondMyMeans]

Update: Yes. It works fantastically. Instead of the leaves collecting at the bottom of the fender, they are right there at the top and takes 3 seconds to scoop them out. Might be stupid, but I'm happy with it. I've seen a lot of 80s 90s 00s gm vehicles rot out at that very spot, hopefully this will help minimize that from happening here.

 

[Big Mama]

Derek Bieri says “ is it really a dumb idea if it works”? Go get ‘em brother. You’re right that many vehicles have gone to the scrap yard bc of rot there.