The towel you placed on the floorboard was steaming hot? If it was a hot steaming wet towel, I would def suspect a heater core leak. You didn't by any chance pull that black tar insulation away from the firewall did you? The exhaust gets very hot in this area. The converter underneath, at least on mine does not have a heat shield on top. Seems like it was built that way. Either that or it went missing somehow. Anyway, if it isn't coming from the heater core, then the exhaust is heating up the floor pretty good. Enough to get the water leaking out hot. If it's THAT hot, i'd check to make sure you're converter isn't getting plugged up or too hot. Don't take the black insulation away from the firewall. Doing so will allow a LOT of heat in.
Once when one of my converters got red hot, the interior of my car started to smell like something was burning. My carpet was out at the time. It turns out the floor had gotten so hot from the burning hot converter that it started cooking the adhesive material on the floorboard.
I hope you didn't use a regular floor vacuum to suck up the water. If it wasn't meant for water, you could damage it :P .
Go ahead and use the carwash vacuum. Who's gonna care...heck, do it at night if you are concerned about an employee noticing hehehe
. and no, that drain on the firewall isn't supposed to have any other pieces attached. It just drips onto the hot converter below. I remember awhile back I didn't know what this noise I was hearing was. Every time after I shut the car off after a drive and got out, as soon as the door closed I heard a SSSsssss noise, like something sizzling. It was water getting shaken out of the drain tube and landing on the exhaust I eventually found out.
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