So I'm pretty sure that I have the cowl leak in my 1998 cherokee. I get a pool of water on my passenger side when it rains and my jeep is parked facing uphill. From previous threads it seems that the right way to fix this is to remove the dash and heater core and install a better seal on the cowl. In some dash removal write ups they say that you have to evacuate the AC to access the heater core and I was wondering if its possible to pull the heater core without doing this as I just fixed the AC.

I know I can access the cowl from the outside by cutting a bit of sheet metal but I would rather not go that route.

 

If you have AC, it must be discharged prior to removing the heater-box. Unfortunate but necessary

 

I cut into the cowl from the top to get at a leak in my 90. Then I discovered it was the heater blower gasket and some spaces/cracks right up there in the corner near where the inner fender meets the firewall. (body putty there had failed). My mistake was to not wait long enough with the hose running on those lower areas for it to start leaking. I guess it needs to pool in there before the dripping starts. So there's that!

 

ahhhh, I was really hoping I could avoid that.

I had not considered the seams between body and fender. I might try and fill those first and see if it fixes my problem. Thanks