URGENT! Please help. drove car thorugh a flooded region and it stopped. now it wont start.

The message from John Henderson contains these words:

The US is a different planet!

Unless he was driving a Toyota pickup truck.

Or the amphibian Triumph Herald of the 1960s.

Budget for an engine rebuild and probably new sound deadening felt in the car.

My wife did this through a ford in flood some years back. It sucked water into the engine which usually bends the conrods as it stops the engine dead. In our case it froze the next day and cracked the block too, on a 24k ZX diesel. We were fortunate that the insurance coughed up for it; the main dealer had to put the car in the paintshop oven for a day to dry the interior and we had to replace the under-dash pad as we just couldn't get rid of the smell (flood water is never clean!).

By all means try your insurance, but most of them rule out flood damage now AFAIK.

yes, that was what my wife thought with the ZX.

unfortunately the ZX air scoop was behind the bumper :-((

It wasn't a Herald, although it shared the same engine and looked vaguely similar - the car you're thinking of was the Amphicar. See

Chris Bolus ( snipped-for-privacy@FARINAb0lus.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Not quite true - I've drowned the 4x4 2cv umpteen times - and it's always been fine once it's dried out a bit. There's nothing modified about the air intake, either. (Yes, it's high, but you want to see the inside of the bonnet - water is CERTAINLY getting up that high!)

It's even worse with a diseasel...

If water doesn't compress very well at an 8:1 compression ratio, just imagine the chaos a 25:1 compression causes...

: Please reassure us that you have comprehensive insurance :-(

I hope not. Why should we all buy him a new car?

Ian

The message from Chris Bolus contains these words:

I saw one of those at the Boat Race one year. Drove into the Thames just downstream of Chiswick Bridge much to the annoyance of the dibbles who were simply not expecting it.

You watch far too much 'Top Gear'

So did all the rest of the prats who we towed out.

guess you are lucky it wasnt this deep, tho you would never belive the kids still managed to nick the wheels and radio

LOL!!!!!!!