As my car had a crack in the top when I bought it, one of my first checks was to lift the carpet to see if it was dry in all four corners, as I know from bitter experience how quick rust can accelerate under a wet carpet.

Was surprised to find that three out of four footwells had the 1.5’ (38.1mm) drain plugs missing, and added that to my tobuy & todo list.

Yesterday while having the car slightly jacket up doing some other work, I tried to spot the openings but got confused as I couldn't find any, could it be that the openings on the floor inside the car goes to some kind of frame beam?
In other words, can the missing footwell drain plugs lead to water getting into the car?

 

maybe try measuring the distance from the outside edge of the body to the hole on the inside and then go under and see where it shows it should be or the general area. also could try using light to see if you can see the light from under the car. in any case I would replace caps or at the least cover the holes.

 

I saw the holes from an angle when lifting the carpet in each well to look, but I took for granted that they went out under the car without investigating any further, was also a bit shocked how the previous owner had been driving around like that as heavy wet weather would get the carpet soaked

My current plan is to take the car to my buddy that has a workshop car lift, and then thoroughly inspect the bottom.

But first I need to finalize the work on the cooling system, had the coolant level sensor of to clean, and replacing both temp sensors (head and w-pump) as well as freshing up with some new coolant (currently only 25% anti-freeze in there).

Was concerned that I had might had spilled coolant on the opti when taking out the w-pump sensor, but when checking it looked dry and I made sure to wipe everything clean in that area, did see that it was a red MSD unit, so I guess its been replaced as that wasn’t the kind the car once came with?