so I'm driving to work on the highway and all of a sudden this ridiculous shower pours. Before I realise I should pull over and wait like some other smart cars, I get in a particularly bad river and my car dies. There's no power at all. 15min later when the rain stopped I had a look under the hood and all fuses look fine but there's water everywhere.

could the ECU have shorted somehow or some relay or whatnot?

(PS talking about my N/T)

HYDROLOCKED :(

if you have any kind of aftermarket intake chances are you sucked up some water, if the engine turns over but dont start you should be ok, if the engine tries to turn over but doesnt than your screwed. if theres no power at all id fix that first to determine the condition of your engine

when I turn the key nothing happens, no lights, no anything. Too early to speak of hydrolocking.

Originally posted by T_K
when I turn the key nothing happens, no lights, no anything. Too early to speak of hydrolocking.

Go through your relays and fuses and look for obvious blows. :shrug

I looked at all fuses and they look fine. How can I test the relays?

weird update. Just before leaving work with the van I took, I looked back at the eclipse that I shoved in the farthest part of the parking lot and surprise, the stoplights were lit. I went to check it out and sure enough, the instrument cluster was lit, the headlights, everything. I've forgotten them on after it lost power and now they're working.

So I insert the key and turn it once and again everything dies but I didn't hear any popping sounds. No lights after that.

I'm thinking I'll leave the car there until all rains run out (next few days according to weather report) and when it's dry start chasing the problem.

ok I narrowed it down a little more. I looked carefully at all fuses, disconnected and connected the battery and then the lights came on again. I inserted the key and turned it once and the gauge cluster lights came on so the ECU is good. Only when I turned it to the last so as to try to start the engine everything died again.

So I'm assuming the starter or the starter relay is bad?

Does the battery still have a good enough charge to start your car?

I would imagine it has, it's almost brand new. Haven't checked because I didn't have a voltmeter around. But even if it didn't I don't think that would cause my problem - when I turned the key to start there was one "click" and all lights died. When I disconnected the battery and reconnected it the lights came back and again when I turned the key "click" and everything dies. I never hear the starter.

It sounds like you have a bad connection on your negative ternminal. I have delt with the same problem before and sure enough it was the culprit.

What I did today:
talked to the guy who occasionally works on my cars (when I hate them too much) and he said try turning the engine with the crank sprocket. I took out the plugs and there are small drops of liquid in all but 1 cylinders (piston tops look so ugly). Honestly it looks greenish but my flashlight was dying so I can't be sure. So then I tried turning the crank sprocket several rotations and it does turn easy enough.



One additional note, all coolant that normally is pushed to the overflow bottle when the car is hot, stayed there after it cooled and it normally doesn't do that.

Maybe on top of all I have a bad head gasket?...

happy end


Replaced the starter, removed the plugs and on turning the key to ignition it cranked perfectly. Then I removed all intake tubes and found some water inside :( cleaned everything, waited 10 min to dry further, cleaned crap from the tb, put everything back together. It took several cranking attempts and some coughing but it fired up eventually and in a few more minutes it ran clean like ever. I drove 15 miles to home, took it to 5000rpm once, no probs. I haven't felt any damage, idles good. So I suppose I got lucky. Now when it hydrolocked, I was actually doing maybe 10mph and the rpms were low, around 1500, I was basically pulling over, so maybe that saved the engine.



Do I hate CAIs? No. I had read a lot of threads about them before I got mine and made my decision. It was my fault that I didn't pull over immediately in the shower (other cars had already) and wait for the worst to pass (it passed like in a couple minutes). I'll be keeping my CAI and will make sure not to repeat my mistake.