Floods and Cars - Sluggish Behavior

Sully

I drove the car into flood water yesterday completely by accident and since then, the car has been sluggish in its driving. Basically, the road was pitch black and I hit flood water in the most unusual place ever - never noticed it until I actually hit the water and there was no warning signs. Its a road I travel daily so I know where it usually floods (and that section was closed!) and its never flooded here before.

Any ideas what could be wrong with the car? It drives around, just a lot more sluggish and lacking in power then it normally does.

Sully

03 Toyota Avensis (the newer model)

plasmaguy

I heard a tip once that you shouldn't change gears while driving through a big flood as doing so causes water to be sucked into the engine.

Don't know if you can believe that or not.

slimjimmc

plasmaguy wrote: »

I heard a tip once that you shouldn't change gears while driving through a big flood as doing so causes water to be sucked into the engine.

Don't know if you can believe that or not.

If your engine sucks up water it's because the air intake is too-low or water too high, not because you changed gears.

coronaextra

Mabye your car sucked up water into the air intake and your filter is wet.
Another possibility would be the Ignition system has probably got wet. Not really sure where to look on the toyotas as they have coil packs for ignition but I would imagine something electrical has got wet causing you to loose power.

piskins72

Is the car petrol or diesel?

peasant

plasmaguy wrote: »

I heard a tip once that you shouldn't change gears while driving through a big flood as doing so causes water to be sucked into the engine gearbox.

FYP

Sully

Petrol

Sully

Mechanic had a look and said the plugs were very wet, so attempted to dry them out. Worked for a while but gone back into its old ways it seems - its jumping like your not in the right gear at times. The EML started flashing continuously until I turned the engine off.

Annoying at this stage. Was driving the stretch of road it happened on again - I just cant see how I could have seen the flooding earlier. It was late at night, no street lights and unless I have my full beam lights on the road is not that clear ahead.

Plugs were wet ? With water or petrol did he say, I'd go to a different mechanic being honest if that's all he can come up with.

Zonda999

Something similiar happened to me in November, went through a flood, not too deep mind, and immediately engine management light came on and i was way down on power. Brought it to my mechanic and found i was running a cylinder down, new spark plug fixed it, hadnt thought before that, that a flood could have caused that but the spark plug may have on the way out anyway

OP, did you get any new spark plugs when you brought it to that mechanic? Would be surprised if that wasnt something related to the problem given the plugs were wet

Matt Simis

coronaextra wrote: »

Mabye your car sucked up water into the air intake and your filter is wet.

I would look at the above immediately. You dont need to go to a mechanic to check your air filter either. Presumably its an OEM paper filter, usually when wet they collapse and get sucked into the engine along with water, writing it off. In your case it may be

-Only partially collapsed, causing a blockage
-Or perhaps parts of it broke off and stuck to the Mass Air Meter, damaging it.

In scenario one your car will be starved of air (and run rich and choke itself on fuel, ie wet plugs) and in scenario two the car will not be able to read the total amount of air flow and possible revert to a baseline (less than optimal) failsafe ECU program.


Regardless, after driving through a very bad flood, you should change the air filter. Its cheap. If you take it off and see that the filter looks perfect, then its unlikely water was sucked into the engine and your issues could be an electrical problem or exhaust problem (hot exhaust meets cold water!).

Sully

Mechanic checked car over and said the plugs were very wet and attempted to dry them out. Shall check the filter shortly.

Car Mad

the distributor could be wet also happend me before after washing engine bay theres a spray you can get to dry them out dont know the name of it though if its any help.New plugs also i would say if he didnt replace them