My mum and I are having a debate concerning the question above. If I had a family sized saloon car and drove it through a puddle 6 inches deep, the splash would go as high as the window normally. Does this splash cause any damage to the engine or anything?
IANAMechanic, but i would say the main thing it would mess up would be your alignment, then tire.
Driving through a hole six inches deep, be it filled with water or not, runs risks to your suspension, ball joint, axle etc. The splash itself is incidental, unless your car is made of saltines or something.
Water splashing up into the engine compartment can play havoc with the electrics sometimes. I’ve come to a halt when my engine has died on me. Usually the heat will dry it out and off you go. That was years ago.
It happened to a friend a couple of years ago and it affected the computer. He had to call out the rescue services.
I meant to say that the car my friend was driving had much more advanced electical/electronic systems
Besides what’s mentioned above, the driver can’t see well into the puddle. Under those circumstances there may be a wash-out of the pavement, debris on the surface, etc.
It’s an avoidable risk to drive blind, especially at speed.
Well, the water could have accumulated to that depth in a large dip in the road, it doesn’t have to be in a pothole.
The only thing the water could damage is electrics. It can also get the brakes wet, which stops them from gripping the wheel properly, but won’t do them any permanent damage. You should always test your brakes to dry them out after driving through a deep puddle.
If the water splashes onto drive belts, the operator could suffer a momentary loss of power assist to steering. Wet brake rotors won’t respond as quickly as dry, so after traversing a major water hazard, I rest my foot on the brakes for a few seconds to warm and dry the pads/rotor surface.
It depends how fast you’re travelling and the clearance of the engine, air intake etc. Hit the water at too high a speed and you’ll aquaplane, resulting in a loss of control. Travel at a lesser speed but still fast and you’ll build up a bow wave which might drown the engine. Travel at a nice, slow speed and you’ll be fine.
At high speed and high engine RPM, enough water could be suck into the intake to blow the engine via a blown cylinder/piston or two.
I was ‘lucky’ enough to watch an exchange at the BMW dealer, wherein the owner was pegged by on-board computer as going about 90 mph through a puddle (of unknown size to BMW).
The engine sucked in so much water that is was blown. I think the block even cracked.
Warranty service was refused, and said owner was left to turn in the claim to his insurance. Said owner returned to the dealer (where my friend manages and reported back on details) to plead and beg because he was out an $8,000 engine (if I recall correctly) and was looking for a new insurance company.
I think he eventually got the insurance claim resolved, but learned a lesson for sure.
Yeah, what Philster said. The only other way that it could make your engine die (but without damage), is if the ignition coil, distributor or wires are exposed to water, the car will sputter and/or die out. Water in the cylinders can definitly cause permanent damage if your intake is exposed to a great deal of water.
When I was driving a Jeep, I drove through a puddle at around 20 mph. It apparently got enough in the carburetor to drown it but didn’t damage the engine. It took it a few seconds to sputter and die so I thought it was out of gas (fuel gauge didn’t work) but indeed it has water in it. I’ve never had it happen in a fuel injected car, but I wouldn’t therefore rate it as safe.
I have experienced dirt and mineral glazing on alternator brushes and contacts afte driving through this kind of deep road water. Though this was quite a few years ago, I don’t believe alternators have changed.
Sadly it was on Friday night during a holiday weekend getaway. It being a holliday weekend, none of the local garages would be open until Tuesday, and from what we heard, they would be swamped for a couple of days, due to all the vacationer’s breakdowns We were lucky that another local couple was there. They followed us home, jump charging our battery every 50-75 miles or so. This took longer than w we planned, and delayed us enough that the sun set, so we were forced to give it a long recharge every 20 miles of the last leg, due to headlight drain.
Everyone we spoke to sold us we’d need to replace the alternator, but I couldn’t get an appointment for two days. In a moment of lunatic genius, I jump-started the car, then ran clean water through the alternator through a garden hose for several minutes (I told you it was lunacy). This apparently cleaned off the contacts, because the problem was fixed, and the alternator lasted years after that.
I’m not recommending this as a repair or a safe way to drive home (I was young and stupid, and I don’t know what damn fool thing someone else might do while trying it). I’m only offering it as evidence that the problem was indeed due to dirty brushes/contacts. Otherwise, flushing a running alternator with clean water would only have made things worse.
Modern cars have gotten pretty good at protecting vital components from water intrusion, but it can happen. Older cars are much worse. More than once I had my old '67 Camaro stall after water got under the distributor cap and killed the engine. The ‘fix’ was to remove the cap, dry everything out, and replace it. That sucked, but it didn’t do any permanent damage.
I’ve never heard of an engine blowing because of water intrusion, and I’ve seen engines with big hood scoops feeding straight into 4-barrel carbs running around in torrential downpours. My Camaro had a water injection system to remove detonation. I would have thought that the quantity of water required to seriously damage the engine would have just caused it to stall out first. But I could be wrong.
Funny thing about puddles. You cannot tell the depth from the top side. What looks to be a 6" deep puddle (probably safe in almost any car) might turn out to be 24" deep (could be trouble)
If you drive quickly through a deep-ish puddle, the force of the water can be pretty severe, too, potentially screwing up your alignment (as mentioned by MSUbulldogs101) and damaging flimsier body parts (plastic wheel well liners, fenders) or trim.
Been there, done that. Broke the car.
Drove my car through a big puddle about 4" deep in a parking lot, at about 35 mph. The force of the water disconnected the muffler, causing me to drive home with a very loud car, and the windows down to avoid CO poisoning. When I re-attached the muffler, the force of the exhaust blew about a gallon of water out of the tailpipe.
My father was not amused. He predicted, correctly, a lifetime of futher exhaust system problems. That muffler didn’t last long, then I had to replace the tailpipe. The header pipes were next, then finally the exhaust manifolds. Not good.
Don’t do it.
Our Jeep Cherokee always used to stall out if we drove through a puddle of any significant size at a speed faster than a crawl, a rather embarrassing trait in a rugged four-wheel-drive vehicle. We realized after a few instances that if the water got high enough to splash the distributor, it would get under the distributor cap and wet the rotor and points. We finally put a thread of silicone sealant around the bottom of the distributor cap, and ever since, we’ve been able to get our Jeep wet!
Well, I have driven through over 3 feet of water in the trucks that I have owned on a number of occasions with no engine damage. YMMV.
The streets around this town flood easily, and I drive through water six inches deep quite often without any damage occurring. I have also seen cars in the shop I work in that have ingested water and locked up the engine, though most of these are people who were out with their 4x4s and went a little too deep.