I may or may not have gotten water in my engine. Not sure yet. The story is below if you want to read.

What I want to know is:
If water gets in the engine, waht is the worst thing that will happen. I know it is bad and the engine may be screwed. But does anyone have a general idea of what damage would be done and how much it would cost to fix >.<

Story:

I just had my CAI installed a few weeks ago and I love it, but it is also the cause of this problem T_T

Well I was on my way home in a thunder storm; This was just a regular texas thunderstorm, I could see fine with the wipers going. It all went wrong as I got about 1/2 a mile from my house. An officer had the road blocked do to an accident or some minor flooding, not sure which. Anyways, I follow the detour a long way out and work my way back in. I get close again and all of a sudden the skys open up and I can't see anything but the tail lights in front of me. We are all going 5-10 mph and taking it safe.

I get out to the main road again where I need to go left. Well there is a huge line of cars moving slowly(atleast I think so, couldnt see far) and being texas and seeing as how nice our drivers are, I decided to go right and take a back way home(yeah, from the back way I already took). All is well till I come to a part where the roads from the right of the road are hills coming down to me. There is an unbelievable amount of water slamming the side of my car and it bogs down and dies.

I manage to coast into a dry zone and sit a few minutes. I start the car again and continue on with a great loss of power. I figured the filter was wet so its not getting enough air, so I take it easy and go slow still. I get to a road that is 1 minute from my house, and goes over a bridge. So I assume it will be safe even though its at the bottom of a hill on both sides. Now mind you I still can not see anything but the tails 2 feet in front of me so I'm just staying close to this car. I start to hear a sloshing sound around my car.

Now as I enter the bridge, this being a texas storm and all, the rain stops abruptly and I realize I'm in water up to the door of my car. I thought If I stop now and put it in reverse, the water will get into the intake when I stop for that brief moment, and I'm half way through already so I mise well continue accross. As soon as I decide to continue my car dies again. I am now stuck in water past the bottom of my door.

I'm sitting there thinking about what the heck I'm going to do, what damage was just caused, why are these idiots trying to drive through the same water they see a car stuck in? I am flasihng my lights at cars trying to tell them not to enter the water but they do it anyways. Of course, they don't have air filters in their wheel wells so they dont get flooded.....

Luckily 2 guys stopped and helped me out. They asked if I need them to tow me out so I said yes. They go back to their house to get the rope and get me out. I get on the phone and let my mom know what happened and this truck comes blasting through the water launching water everywhere. I barely get my window up in time and water still comes through the cracks.

Now the guys get back and I take my shoes and socks off and climb out of the car. I grab the tow line and try to attach it to the tow hook under our front end as cars splash water all over me -_-. Luckily I knew about it from working on my car because the water was too high to get under and look for it lol. Anyways, they towed me to the near by school and thats where my car sits now, out in the rain, waiting for the filter to dry up.

The End.

Man, that would suck. I feel sorry for you dude. At least it doesn't sound like you have hydraulic'd the motor.

Not sure waht "hydraulic'd the motor" means, but thanks for the sympothy sad.gif

Edit--> P.S. How long should I wait to let the filter and any water sitting in the bottom of the pipe dry up?

"hydraulic'd the motor" is when you cause a cylinder to fill with enough water that it cannot compress and will more than often bend conrods.

You might want to check your crank case after all this to make sure there is no water present, otherwise you could rust your bearings, etc.

^^ That would be Hydro Locking. If your engine turns over at all, you probably aren't hydro locked.

Well there is school tomorrow and I dont want to get towed. Its in the teacher parking lot because that was the closest one. I dont know if its safe to go try now or if i should get up early in the morning. Its a few blocks but as light as our cars are, I can't push it that far in the rain.

As I said in the shoutbox, the #1 thing that could happen is your conrods bending trying to compress the piston. But I don't think any of that happened. Mine did the same thing a year back, but the next mroning it ran fine, you should be fine.

I appreciate the help guys. I'll update this tomorrow after I find out if it is alright or not.

i think youll be fine. the engine would need to take in tons of water to actually be hydrolocked. just let it dry a bit and you should be fine

Well, I went over to start it this morning and it wont start. It just makes a clunk sound and wont turn over at all. Everything is wet, foam around the radiator, radiator grill is wet.... everything is wet. I'm scared I wrecked my engine. found an engine for $325 with only 1000 miles on it. Its 3 miles away so I need to go see whats wrong with it.

Anyone know if i did bend a rod if i need to replace the whole engine or if it can be fixed. I know it would cost a fortune on labor T_T