Flooded engine - how much trouble am I in?

id have still taken out the plugs and cranked it over before the garage got hold of it,chances are it was an easyfix,you know what garages are like they will probably say the engines wrecked and charge you for it!!!

insurance company wont know your tried pumping the water out of the cylinders
 
TaKeN said:
Any news from the garage yet?

They should have pulled the plugs out by now and tried to turn the thing over atleast.
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I had a call from my wife about an hour ago saying she'd spoken to him and he was putting something into the engine to try to drive the water out. She's going to check in at the garage a bit later and see if there's any news.
 
Bent rods more often then not, car electrics are usually very well shielded from water and very rarely present an issue.

A compression test would be the best first step, a bent rod lowers the piston crown slightly reducing the total compression for that cylinder.
 
Boo, turns out they've done naff all to the car today. They're going to look at it tomorrow.

If nothing else it's going to need a good clean inside. My wife said the footwells were full of water.
 
Learn you to not go through big puddles again :p

Chesterfield is notorious for floods, especially under the railway bridges. I always 'lol' watching stupid people ignoring the police officers advice and then try going through the floods.
 
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You actually got out and pushed it??

The general advice in this situation is, put car in 1st (if a manual) and turn the engine over on the ignition. If you haven't killed the electrics or completely hydrolocked the engine, it will just kangaroo itself out :)

If that doesn't work, that's when you go for the wet foot approach :)
 
Lucero said:
You actually got out and pushed it??

The general advice in this situation is, put car in 1st (if a manual) and turn the engine over on the ignition. If you haven't killed the electrics or completely hydrolocked the engine, it will just kangaroo itself out :)

If that doesn't work, that's when you go for the wet foot approach :)
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Believe me, I tried starting it before getting out!
 
Turning over an engine with the starter motor isn't going to bend the conrods IMO. A starter motor simply doesn't have the force to cause the rods to bend.
 
Rybo89 said:
Learn you to not go through big puddles again :p

Chesterfield is notorious for floods, especially under the railway bridges. I always 'lol' watching stupid people ignoring the police officers advice and then try going through the floods.
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There were no more warnings than when there's the usual puddle on that corner of road... Had there been, I might have been more cautious.

I'm not saying I wasn't a fool to drive though a suspicious pool of standing water, but it's not like I was actively ignoring present warnings.
 
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The technique for driving through standing water is to enter at walking pace, create a bow wave and then follow it through. The bow wave creates a low pressure area down the sides of the vehicle therefore reducing the depth as you drive through.

Obviously it's always best to get out and check depth first unless you've got a good snorkel lol.
 
My other half drove her Cooper S through a big puddle - she said it was over the bonnet! Went over to have a look and apart from an awful lot of steam (water had poured over the engine through the intercooler scoop) it was fine!
 
Vonhelmet said:
I'm not saying I wasn't a fool to drive though a suspicious pool of standing water, but it's not like I was actively ignoring present warnings.
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The 'stupid' bit wasnt directed at you. Talking about the muppets who ignore the advice by the coppers, potentially ruining their cars to save 2miles re-routing.
 
Any update yet?

These past few days have amazed me, I turned around (in an artic) to avoid flood water, the cars behind me didn't follow me....
I returned a while later to find the road closed due to 5 stranded flooded cars & what looked like quite a film of oil on top of the floodwater....

Bloody muppets!!
 
Firestar_3x said:
Muppets all over the place, seen several family hatches spun and through fences on roundabouts, no doubt fitted with Teflon tyres.
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I bet there was much backslapping at the 'great price' they paid for those tyres at the point of sale.

Don't you know though, people only buy decent tyres if they want to speed or drive quickly.....
 
"so you dont drive like a hooligan? you wont been racing tyres then"

to be fair, a car will behave different on a greasy wet roundabout if you go in too quickly, regardless of what tyres you have
 
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