yelloyello

I have been the unfortunate victim of the unseen standing 'pond' of water on the expressway at about 2 am the other night. I hit the 'pond' at about 60 and the car bogged down. When I stopped to check it out, the entire engine bay was soaked. The hoodliner was even soaking wet. It runs very rough and wants to stall. I have had someone check it out and I know it is running VERY lean. I burnt out the O2 sensors. Other than that, I recieved minimal codes, mainly dealing with the O2 sensors and engine misfire which I think is a result of burning the sensors out. I have driven the car about 25 miles since then taking it to get checked and then to the shop, black soot coming from the exhaust everytime I accelerate. I have a Blackwing, LG headers(turning nice shade of blue)My main question is what else should I look for? Am I out of the dreaded hydrolock phase due to my driving it afterwards? Am I at risk of the Headers cracking at the welds due to the heat and then rapid introduction of water? Thanks in advance I have also posted this in the Tech section.

Dirty Howie

How deep was the water???



DH

Yello95

It couldn't have been but so deep on a roadway but it was deep enough to soak his engine bay...so who cares exactly how deep it was?

George8211

Wow... A standing pond, sounds like something that would happen in Michigan.

Your out of the danger zone of hydro-lock. That only happens when
water enters the intake... your beyond that at this point. If you fried
your O2 sensors, that may cause your fuel to burn rich and give you
some soot out your tail pipes.

I don't think there's too much to worry about... I steam clean my
engine at the car washes. I'm kinda surprised that you lost your O2
sensors. You might want to do a very close check of all your wire
conections, driving throught the water like that can cause some major
force on what ever the water is hitting.

cmeflyby

that's what i'd be concerned with, hitting that much water at speed could easily disconnect something, kink a hose and jam it somewhere it can't get free from, etc.

good luck

lpabsolute

Holy Crap...I would be calling the some tipe of official and let them know what happened. That's just not right. Hope you car is ok and you don't have any per. damage. Good Luck...Keep us posted......

vetdude

Bummer. I'd get the O2 sensors replaced first then go from there. Best of luck.

StuzVette

if its not locked...hydrolock is not an issue...
...but if the electronics are disturbed...the engine could run like you described...

I hope all works out well for you...

Red C6 Z06

Somebody explain Hydrolock!

SpeedyZ

Hydrolock is what happens when fluid gets into a cylinder of a internal combustion engine. The volume of fluid must be greater than the volume of cylinder+head. At TDC that is around 66cc of fluid since the cylinder head have around 66cc chambers. So if you put 65cc of fluid in a cylinder the engine will still turn over because the fluid will go up into the cylinder head and there is still 1cc of air to compress. But if you put 76cc of fluid in the cylinder then you have 10cc more fluid that volume of cylinder+head at TDC. Fluid won't compress so the engine will lock and not turn any further. If you keep pushing against the fluid it will be slowly forced by the rings into the oil and the motor will turn again. Not big deal to hydrolock a engine while it's not running. Like if a head gasket leaks fluid into the cylinder when you hit the starter it will just lock and normally does no damage. The real damage is when the engine is running at speed and fluid enters the engine. The engine won't instantly stop due to the large moving mass, but some moving parts will stop (or some stopped parts will move) because the fluid will not compress! Something has to give!

Back when I worked in a shop one of the guys had a old pushrod Volvo that had low compression on one cylinder. He pulled the head thinking a valve problem had it worked and put it back on. Still had the exact same problem. Did a leak down test and had good results. Everyone was baffled at what was causing the problem. It had to be something in the engine so they pulled the head again. This time after looking for a long time for the problem someone notice something didn't look right with the pistons. After turning over the engine we notice that one piston didn't come to the top of the cylinder, it was 3/4" from the top. After removing the engine and removing the pan we found the rod was bent over to the side at least an inch! The motor had apparently been hydrolocked at sometime and bent the rod. I was amazed at how much the rod was bent and not hitting anything and that the car had been running a long time like that because there was already a ring worn in the cylinder at the lower location.

0vetteshop

Just because it didnt lock up,it is still possible that you slightly bent a rod.Faulty O2's will not cause a missfire code.If you have a missfire code stored the 1st step would be to determine which cylinder is missfiring.If a visual inspection does not bring any results,a TECH2 will indicate which cylinder is missfiring.You may want to pull the plugs to inspect

Vetteman Jack

Must have been a heck of a lot of water to soak the engine bay. Hope that just be replacing the O2 sensors your car runs good again.

Big Jay E

I got caught in two flash floods in Nevada on the way to Bonniville. When I came up on the first one, it was a river flowing across the desert and right across the road, about 50 yards wide. It was 100 miles back to the last town, so I took a chance. I eased through annd then took off. About 1/2 hour later I came up on a bigger one. This one looked like it was about 7 or 8 inches deep and maybe 75 yards wide.

Now I had to either go through this one, or turn around and go back through the first one again. There was a couple of Nevada road crew at this one, with large trucks. The guy told me that I could make it if I stayed in the middle. I would not have tried it if they had not been there. I made it and went on into Ely for the night. Next day I opened the hood and was in shock at how filthy everything was. Brown mud every where. The detail shop got it all clean except the hood liner which is stained. Some day I will get a new one.
I had a Z06 air box cover and K&N. Apparently nothing got in the motor as it ran fine rest of the trip.

The upside is that about an hour after the last flood, I was radared at 98 in a 70 and the tropper let me off.

Jay