Think I nearly drowned my surf

[oneidadan]

Hello, on my way home from work today I went through a mighty fine puddle of water. It usually occurs after heavy rain and normally it's no problem, today though it was slightly deeper than usual and I managed an impressive bow wave, until the engine stalled and left me in the middle of the puddle
I left it a couple of minutes and after some hesitation it managed to start (albeit reluctantly) and now it's running fine. When I got out the puddle I looked under the bonnet but pretty much all the engine bay was dry. Could I have sucked some water into the air intake by accident?
Think I got away lightly to be honest i've never seen under water through my windscreen before, it was very exciting lol

[Surfer Ross]

Could have momentarily shorted something. If it had ingested water, you'd be sitting with a broken conrod and a dead engine at the moment.

[oneidadan]

OK that's made me feel a bit better. What if it had just got a tiny bit of water in the intake? I looked in the engine bay, but honestly it looked very dry? I'd like to find out what caused it so I can maybe sort something out to stop it happening again. This puddle (pond lol) occurs quite regular and it's on my main route to work.

[Surfer Ross]

I'm at a loss as to what the route of the problem was (other than the puddle). It could be any number of things.

I'm 100% confident that you didn't get more than a drip of water into the engine. Steel compresses far more readily than water, any amount of water in the engine will hydrolock it at best and snap your rods at worst.

[oneidadan]

OK thankyou for that, although you've gone and ruined my chances of getting a snorkel, the wife will never believe I absolutely need one now!
No thankyou though, it must be some electrical connection somewhere then. As I was going through it it was running fine, then it started to die. When it stalled it was very reluctant to start, if it did the idle was poor then stalled again, but kept turning it over and finally it fired up (to whoops of joy and maybe even a fist pump ).

[fonecrusher1]

Something similar happened to me a few weeks ago during a bit of flooding.
I was travelling through about 2 to 2.5 ft of water for a fairly prolonged period & she started getting grumpy ie; losing power then gaining power, struggling a bit if you know what i mean.
She was fine afterwards but i got a bit of shock & i was worried i'd fecked up the engine.
Dont think i got water in the air filter because as Surfer ross said we'd know all about if we did...Bang!!
I think i was going a bit too fast maybe. I just read somewhere that if you get a back-pressure effect in your exhaust it can cause a stalling situation in water?
Who knows?

[oneidadan]

yeah that sounds pretty similar. When it stalled the exhaust was under water, perhaps that's why it didn't want to start again? I was perhaps going to fast too, I was in 1st gear, high range but going as fast as it would go in thatt gear, I wanted to keep the revs up and I thought you had to go quick so you created a bow wave so it wouldn't get into the air intake? I so confused

[andycook]

check your airfilter? then you will have a better idea, see if it is damp or muddy

[Growler]

The air intake is just behind the nearside headlamp. You may have choked off the airflow if the water was up around there.

IMHO 2nd low would have been a better choice if there was that much water to push out of the way

[oneidadan]

thanks for the replies, I checked the airfilter and it seemed OK, but it was the day after so it might have dried on its own?
I toyed with the idea of low range but I thought it might not be safe putting it in 4wd as I was still on tarmac, do you think it would have been OK?
It's introduced some Gremlins into my electrical system though I think. For some reason my speakers stopped working on the stereo and both batteries have died and I think I need a new starter motor again (although to be honest they were dying anyway so it could be coincidence) .

[Maverick]

There are times when it is safe to use 4wd on tarmac.
Really it's going around corners when you get the problems, or exceeding 62mph (I think it's 62mph, 100kph. Need to recheck the bunf sometime.).

Or of course if you have mismatched tyres, either in size or wear.