I looked down into my cowl panel, and found a whole bunch of leaves and sticks stuck inside. How do I remove the cowl panel to get all that junk out of there? When the leaves fall down into the cowl panel, where do they go from there? I might as well clean the whole path out.

 

You'll have to remove a lot of Phillips screws both through the slots of the cowl and along the cowl/hood seal. Remove the wiper arms and pull towards the front of the truck and up. Those leaves and sticks migrate down and inside to the fresh air vents of the kick panels where after several years they become compost (I speak from experience). Remove them and clean out the mess. Let the vents dry out and rig up a way to vacuum the remainder of nature's detritus. I am replacing my cowl with an '87 which has small holes rather than slots. I have a lot of trees where I park and leaves always get in there and it's too hard to fish them out.

 

You might also want to consider - if you're real ambitious - getting into the lower part of the cowl panel, behind the back leg of the fender. There is a rubber plug with a flap in the lower section where all that debris/compost eventually ends up. I didn't know it was there until I pulled a fender off. The flap is designed to keep garbage from getting in, but it also keeps the stuff from falling out too.

 

I have had 5 trucks all 80-86 in the past 10-15 years. I had the first one I bought do a bad thing to me so I have learned from it and have saved myself a lot of problems on the other trucks I have owned. Anyway here is what happened I almost burned up the first truck on account of some leaves that got into the duct system I turned on the heater one morning and the cab filled up with white smoke and ran me out I just knew my truck was fixing to go up in flames but it did not. If you look under the hood on the passenger side below where the heater motor is at there is a 3 prong plug that is plugged into a relay that has a coiled wire behind it color is usually red. there is 2 screws that mount it to the fire wall. the coiled up wire on the inside will get red hot and if there is leaves in there it will burn them and even catch them on fire like it did to me. All you have to do is check to make sure there are no leaves in that space. take the 3 prong wired plug off and take out the 2 mounting screws and check. Like I said I have had 5 of these trucks and all of them had leaved in that space and it is scary to find old dried out leaves that have been smoldering from being next to that coiled wire. So take a few minutes and check it out and make sure your truck does not burn down on you. The best way to get to these leaves is to take out the blower motor and just reach in and take out the leaves it is pretty simple maintenance

 

Thanks for this description. This happened to me as well. Scared me out of the truck! Ive been meaning to look into the cause but it hasnt happened since. Youve saved me the trouble and I appreciate it.

 

What I did....put some window screen under the cowl panel.

 

I had the same thing happen on my 86 F250. I was in Las Vegas on surface streets with our travel trailer behind it was just a few days before Christmas. I pulled out of a Wal Mart and all of a sudden there was smoke coming through the A/C vents. Then it quit. I got on the freeway headed to Sam's Town RV Park. As I turned off the freeway it started smoking again. This time worse. When I got to the park I started looking for the problem and ended up pulling the heater motor out and pulled out about a gallon of packed leaves.

 

I couldn't get the cowl panel off without first removing the hood. Did I miss something?