Usually, unless like mine someone has been in before and ripped things out brutally.
The knee panel is attached to a small plastic bracket on the transmission side panel so has to come off first.
IIRC there are about 5 fixings, two behind the pop-off trim strip below the steering wheel, top right, bottom right and bottom left (onto the bracket)

I think it must vary depending on where you park the car. I've only once had to clean out the aircon drains, never had to do the central scuttle drain (but I have checked that it works), nor the sun roof drains, but the wheel arch ones give me the most trouble.

Even without the 'teats' mine block sometimes (particularly the passenger side), but a poke with a bit of wire clears them easily enough.

Alas my scuttle drains are blocked again! :-(

Just wondering if anyone has any particular recommendations for appropriate chemical additives to very hot water that will dissolve the crud most readily.
In the past I've used detergent or washing-up liquid which has worked eventually.

So far it's had one small shot of hot water with washing-up liquid and not achieved anything.

This is what I did last time (for the centre drain under the air-intake box):
http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/showpost....1&postcount=39

Worked great. No problem since and no ill-effects. I would give it a good flush through afterwards, though I think the drain cleaner would have to be left in there for a long time to do any harm.

Thanks, Sodium Hydroxide which isn't good for aluminium? So thorough flushing afterwards.

As it happens we do have some of that stuff in the kitchen.

Great tip. +++
I only had about 100ml of it left but just 2 minutes after pouring it in stuff started flowing through.
Just going to flush through thoroughly now with a few loads of hot water.

True. But there's probably little, if any, bare aluminium it should come in contact with down there and it's a fairly diluted product.

I suspect the thousands of gallons of rainwater that pass through there over the life of the car are probably far more damaging than 30 mins of contact with diluted sodium hydroxide.

That's great :)

Where you've only used a small amount for a short time, you may not have cleared it completely. Hopefully you have, but if it blocks again you might need to leave more of it in there for longer. I keep a spare bottle of it to hand now, but I haven't had to use it since so it seems to do a thorough job.

Indeed, I'll do the same as I expect only one side has actually cleared properly.

Next time (oh the pessimism with D2 drains!) I'll start with the drain cleaner, it does say it's denser than water so sinks to the bottom quickly to start work.