Horatio

When the steering shudders during braking it means the disks are warped. This can happen either because of extreme heat damaging the disks, faulty manufacture - common on cheap brake disks, and even incorrect/uneven torque settings when fitting wheels. It happened to me with my old Mondeo. Problem was solved by buying decent aftermarket items.

You know it's a common problem, I know it's a common problem - but will your local Ford garage know? It's always common unless it happens to you. In which case, it's very unusual and will cost you an arm and a leg! LOL! The rusty box of gubbins is the result - what you need to deal with is the cause - the actual source of water ingress, otherwise you'll be back in exactly the same boat before long. I wouldn't trust a dealer to solve the problem TBH. They might well dry the car and replace the 'box of tricks' for you. They will definitely charge for all the time your car is parked at their garage. But I doubt they'll have the will to establish exactly where the water is coming in from. That's the bottom line. :lol: And as you'll note, the number of sources where the water could be coming in from is quite bewildering. I'm in exactly the same boat as you (no pun intended) and so far I've experienced about 5 of the known causes, each time the results were the same - water on the passenger floor well. Except the windscreen - that resulted in water in both the floor wells and caused the windows to open and shut of their own accord. Usually during heavy rain! I'm taking a belt and braces approach to solving a passenger side foot-well 'pond' that has been appeared and re-appeared ever since I first owned the vehicle in 2001. Mine is a W reg 2.3 GLX. In order, here's a list of possibilities for you to investigate: 1) Windscreen leak - can effect both foot-wells and can easily interfere with your ECU, fitted under the driver's seat. 2) Pollen filter leak - effects the passenger foot-well, caused by incorrectly fitted pollen filter - where filter doesn't fit correctly over the seal. 3) Scuttle drains - these can become blocked, consequently the water pools and drains through the pollen filter or possibly elsewhere on the bulkhead. 4) Black plastic shrouds at base of windscreen, under the wipers - where these plug in need to be silicon sealed - 4 out of 6 reside over the occupant side of the bulkhead!! That's right - directly over your feet, behind the dash!! 5) Inner door seal/weather seal - the metal lip where it fits at the base of the door entrance can become rusty and irregularly shaped. 6) Sunroof - the drain pipe from this can become disconnected and needs to be refitted. 7) Rear washer pipe - as discussed here. In addition, a really helpful member included the following on a word document on another thread. 8) A pillar joint seal. Close proximity to 4) on the list above. Download the word doc for full details/diagram. 9) Bulkhead panel joint seal. 10) Wheel housing/Bulkhead/floor panel seals If anyone can add anything to this list, I would be most grateful - keeping my Galaxy dry is a work in progress. Regards the underlay beneath the carpet - when it gets wet, the carpet above may in some cases remain dry. However, you'll notice the smell before too long and perpetual misting of the windscreen. Getting it dry is no easy task as the sound insulation material is a thick, dense, felt-like material. I removed the grey trim (about 4 or 5 screws concealed by removable plastic covers), lifted the carpet and used a stanley knife to cut through the rubber matting/underlay/felt. I cut as large an area as I could - right up under the dash, up to the centre console and back as far as the seat. The resultant mass of wet underlay easily weighs in excess of 20kg if it gets as saturated as mine did. It holds alot of water! To get it dry - be patient. It's not going to happen over night. You don't want this thing corroding your floor pan or damaging your air-bag inflation charge, or the loom. The way I dried mine was to leave as much water run/drip away first - all day when the weather was fine, draped over a wall in direct sunshine, rubber side uppermost. Then I took it indoors - with permission from the missus. BE WARNED! You won't be able to hide this thing from your other half. I put it in the bath and used old towels to draw out moisture. Then when it just felt damp, I left it held up against an economy seven storage heater. It took 4-5 days to fully dry out. Don't bother re-fitting it until you've convinced yourself (!) that there are no more leaks. Since 2003, I've had to remove this passenger side underlay 4 times. It's no joke. I appreciate I'm new to the forum, bear with me whilst I air my sorrows! :lol:

I posted this info on another thread here: I'm taking a belt and braces approach to solving a passenger side foot-well 'pond' that has been appeared and re-appeared ever since I first owned the vehicle in 2001. Mine is a W reg 2.3 GLX. For any others out there researching possible causes for their unwanted water feature/s, take heart. Before you can prevent your floor from becoming soaked, first you'll have to establish which leak/combination of leaks your car has. Mine has suffered from 5 different sources of leaks, seemingly these problems employ tag team tactics to annoy us. Must be the law of sod. In order, here's a list of possibilities for you to investigate: 1) Windscreen leak - can effect both foot-wells and can easily interfere with your ECU, fitted under the driver's seat. 2) Pollen filter leak - effects the passenger foot-well, caused by incorrectly fitted pollen filter - where filter doesn't fit correctly over the seal. 3) Scuttle drains - these can become blocked, consequently the water pools and drains through the pollen filter or possibly elsewhere on the bulkhead. 4) Black plastic shrouds at base of windscreen, under the wipers - where these plug in need to be silicon sealed - 4 out of 6 reside over the occupant side of the bulkhead!! That's right - directly over your feet, behind the dash!! 5) Inner door seal/weather seal - the metal lip where it fits at the base of the door entrance can become rusty and irregularly shaped. 6) Sunroof - the drain pipe from this can become disconnected and needs to be refitted. 7) Rear washer pipe - as discussed here. If anyone can add anything to this list, I would be most grateful - keeping my Galaxy dry is a work in progress. Regards the underlay beneath the carpet - when it gets wet, the carpet above may in some cases remain dry. However, you'll notice the smell before too long and perpetual misting of the windscreen. Getting it dry is no easy task as the sound insulation material is a thick, dense, felt-like material. I removed the grey trim (about 4 or 5 screws concealed by removable plastic covers), lifted the carpet and used a stanley knife to cut through the rubber matting/underlay/felt. I cut as large an area as I could - right up under the dash, up to the centre console and back as far as the seat. The resultant mass of wet underlay easily weighs in excess of 20kg if it gets as saturated as mine did. It holds alot of water! To get it dry - be patient. It's not going to happen over night. You don't want this thing corroding your floor pan or damaging your air-bag inflation charge, or the loom. The way I dried mine was to leave as much water run/drip away first - all day when the weather was fine, draped over a wall in direct sunshine, rubber side uppermost. Then I took it indoors - with permission from the missus. BE WARNED! You won't be able to hide this thing from your other half. I put it in the bath and used old towels to draw out moisture. Then when it just felt damp, I left it held up against an economy seven storage heater. It took 4-5 days to fully dry out. Don't bother re-fitting it until you've convinced yourself (!) that there are no more leaks. Since 2003, I've had to remove this passenger side underlay 4 times. It's no joke. I appreciate I'm new to the forum, bear with me whilst I air my sorrows! :lol:

Awesome info. Thanks! This adds another half a dozen possible leak sources to investigate!! Yet more work.......

What a useful post. Many thanks for interesting information. I'll be sure to keep an eye on mine. I'm taking a belt and braces approach to solving a passenger side foot-well 'pond' that has been appeared and re-appeared ever since I first owned the vehicle in 2001. Mine is a W reg 2.3 GLX. For any others out there researching possible causes for their unwanted water feature/s, take heart. Before you can prevent your floor from becoming soaked, first you'll have to establish which leak/combination of leaks your car has. Mine has suffered from 5 different sources of leaks, seemingly these problems employ tag team tactics to annoy us. Must be the law of sod. In order, here's a list of possibilities for you to investigate: 1) Windscreen leak - can effect both foot-wells and can easily interfere with your ECU, fitted under the driver's seat. 2) Pollen filter leak - effects the passenger foot-well, caused by incorrectly fitted pollen filter - where filter doesn't fit correctly over the seal. 3) Scuttle drains - these can become blocked, consequently the water pools and drains through the pollen filter or possibly elsewhere on the bulkhead. 4) Black plastic shrouds at base of windscreen, under the wipers - where these plug in need to be silicon sealed - 4 out of 6 reside over the occupant side of the bulkhead!! That's right - directly over your feet, behind the dash!! 5) Inner door seal/weather seal - the metal lip where it fits at the base of the door entrance can become rusty and irregularly shaped. 6) Sunroof - the drain pipe from this can become disconnected and needs to be refitted. 7) Rear washer pipe - as discussed here. If anyone can add anything to this list, I would be most grateful - keeping my Galaxy dry is a work in progress. Regards the underlay beneath the carpet - when it gets wet, the carpet above may in some cases remain dry. However, you'll notice the smell before too long and perpetual misting of the windscreen. Getting it dry is no easy task as the sound insulation material is a thick, dense, felt-like material. I removed the grey trim (about 4 or 5 screws concealed by removable plastic covers), lifted the carpet and used a stanley knife to cut through the rubber matting/underlay/felt. I cut as large an area as I could - right up under the dash, up to the centre console and back as far as the seat. The resultant mass of wet underlay easily weighs in excess of 20kg if it gets as saturated as mine did. It holds alot of water! To get it dry - be patient. It's not going to happen over night. You don't want this thing corroding your floor pan or damaging your air-bag inflation charge, or the loom. The way I dried mine was to leave as much water run/drip away first - all day when the weather was fine, draped over a wall in direct sunshine, rubber side uppermost. Then I took it indoors - with permission from the missus. BE WARNED! You won't be able to hide this thing from your other half. I put it in the bath and used old towels to draw out moisture. Then when it just felt damp, I left it held up against an economy seven storage heater. It took 4-5 days to fully dry out. Don't bother re-fitting it until you've convinced yourself (!) that there are no more leaks. Since 2003, I've had to remove this passenger side underlay 4 times. It's no joke. I appreciate I'm new to the forum, bear with me whilst I air my sorrows! :lol:

OK, my 2.3 DOHC Galaxy's lower timing chain cover has also developed a leak. It looks corroded and is actually broken close to where one of the bolts fits. It's a ford only part and costs

Thanks - this thread has alot of great info. Can't open the pictures though for some reason, perhaps it's because my site access is limited as a noob or something. A lot of what I say here in my first post is leak related, as my quest to make my Galaxy a pond-free environment has led me here, the realm of the pollen filters and the free. Anyway, did mine today and whilst I was 'in there' checked some other stuff as well. Ford designed my Galaxy to include an interesting water feature - in the passenger side foot well. Thought I'd investigate. Presumably quite a few people will be checking this thread as a possible source of the water ingress too. If you are, read on. I think there are variations on the theme going on here, because I was unable to remove the frame/filter without dropping the whole wiper motor assembly. I attempted the 'all creatures great and small approach' right up to the elbows, but there was no way I could get the filter element to clear the box in which it sits. Never in Europe. Mine is a W reg 2000 GLX, with a Bosch wiper unit. In fact, mine was so fiddly and seeing as I wanted to have a good look at the drains etc I decided to remove the Wiper assembly completely. I'd already gone to the trouble of dropping it an inch or two anyway. To do so: Remove the nuts from the wipers. Carefully remove the wipers keeping in mind that they are spring loaded items and could potentially smash your windscreen. Remove the 3 bolts from the wiper motor assembly, unplug the connecting plug (remembering to squeeze the plastic clips either side) and un-clip the cables from the spade-like attachment on the passenger side of the mechanism. Carefully remove from the drivers side whilst avoiding the coolant expansion bottle. Following on from the instructions here, the frame came out no problem - but I noticed that the filter wasn't correctly fitted to it. Because the filter wasn't held fully open within the frame, it was quite apparent that the filter element wasn't fully covering the seal that resides inside the box. In other words, the pollen filter was doing sweet FA and furthermore, the gaps were a likely source of water ingress. At each end of the frame, it's important to slip the plastic tabs into filter - this keeps the element at it's intended length and thus flush with the seals inside the pollen filter housing once re-fitted. Also, along the top and bottom edges of the frame, note the small plastic tabs (in pairs) on the inside edges that are designed to hold the filter edges in place. Miss anyone of these, and it wont be fitted correctly. Back to the leak. With 1 source eliminated, I looked at the plastic shrouds at the base of the windscreen - where the wipers are bolted on. These plastic items snap into place, so I carefully popped them off and had a look. Each shroud has three lugs. Two of the three lugs actually locate on the occupant side of the bulkhead, somewhere in-line with the front occupant's feet. Water ingress could easily occur here too, so I silicon sealed (4 out of 6) where the lugs plug in. Every time these lugs are removed, they will need to be re-sealed. Source 2. Then of course, there's the inner door seal. The seal that goes around the door entrance on the front passenger side door. Due to the aforementioned water feature, which was irritatingly intermittent, the bottom edge that fits into the door seal was rusty. Being stepped on repeatedly obviously doesn't help either, so alas, here was yet another way for water to penetrate into the passenger side foot well. The whole bottom edge had to be cleaned, levelled, treated and the loose rust removed from the seal - to replace with new is a