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Flood damage


Tarrot
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My wife found herself approaching a pool of water across the road.  Another car coming in the other direction went through and passed her.  She drove into the water and the engine died.  It was deeper than it looked.  She was eventually rescued and the car towed to a nearby garage.  The garage have now told us the engine is damaged beyond repair and the car a write-off.  I am a little suspicious of this claim (partly because I know the garage) and am looking for comment as to whether it is plausible.  The car is a  1.9 D Renault Laguna "break".  The water was at most 50 cm deep.  It was across the floor of the car inside, just covering the tranmsission hump.  It would have come up to the bottom of the engine, but no higher.  Anybody know how much damage is that likely to cause? Is it really a write-off or are we possibly being tricked? 

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Yes the engine will deffo be foutu plus there is likely to be other damage if as you say the water penetrated the cabin.

Diesels having such a high compression ratio also have much more suction on the intake stroke than a petrol engine, the air intakes on nearly all modern cars are low down beneath the grille often behind the bumper in the wheel arch, even at tickover a diesel will happily suck the water up 70cm into the cylinders and the result is a set of bent con rods at the very least.

I do know someone that managed to claim on his car insurance in the UK but it was a long uphill struggle, I wish you luck with the same task in France and dont envy you.

Ironically if you want to go swimming with your vehicle then a diesel is what you want but it needs a snorkel and on modern vehicles the electronics relocating high up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr8eEWyKQHM

One minute in is rather good.

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You also need a detailed description of the damage from the garage, not just a statement that it is a write-off.

If your insurers will consider a claim it is important that the garage does not take apart more than necessary to diagnose the problem, and does not make repairs other than any which are necessary to mitigate the damage and prevent further consequential damage, before the Insurance company's Expert has inspected the car.

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It depends, if when your wife drove the car into the water and was going too fast the water may have splashed up and entered the engine through the air intake, if so thats probably good night nurse to the engine. Also I must say "above the transmission hump" is high [:(] 

Posted after Chancer, sorry mate!

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If you are going to involve the insurers remember that your wife did not choose to drive through, the conditions of bad visibility and spray from the oncoming vehicle meant that she did not have enough braking distance to stop before the water hazard. [;-)]

Still dont fancy your chances though.

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I am with chancer on this one. The last time I saw the figures buying all the parts to build a Ford Sierra cost 8 times the on the road price. So it is pretty easy to do enough damage for the car to be beyound econimic repair. Depending on the age of car I might be tempted to replace trim from a scrap yard if I could buy the write off sufficiently cheaply from the insurance company. More notes as link below :

http://www.whatcar.com/car-news/flood-damage-what-you-need-to-know/what-happens-if-my-car-gets-flooded/226645

best of luck

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Many thanks for the (generally gloomy) news.  The event isn't insured.  We took a risk on an oldish car.  Actually the insurance people have been quite nice:- they are picking up the bill for towing and strictly I don't think they needed to.  We've decided to get it towed to a Renault garage for another opinion.  I wasn't there, but I gather the engine simply stopped - suggesting an electrical fault.  It's unlikely water was sucked in, but I'm going on a second-hand description of the water level.  I've been doing web searches on water damaged cars in the UK.  As ever, mixed messages.  We'd be willing to shell out for a repair because we like the car but now I have another question - is there a French version of Auto-Trader?  It looks like we need one.

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http://www.largus.fr/   

Is the nearest to Auto trader but because of distances involved French second hand car market seems much more local than UK. I would be looking for a recommendation from French neigbours for somewheer other than a franchised Renault garage also make sure thy know it is not an insurance job and that you want it running and in a state to pass a CT not perfect. 

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Were this a petrol engined vehicle then I would hold out some hope, the water splashing around may have caused the HT side of the ignition system to track to earth, also once the air intake went under water, and make no mistake from what you have said it was well under water a petrol engine would normally  suffocate before ingesting a slug of water.

I dont hold out much hope for your diesel on what you have said but would like to be proved wrong, the only positive for me is that you wont have all the grief from your insurers if you know its not covered.

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I deliberately didn't speculate on what sort of damage is involved, as that depends on too many factors.

From what you say it could be an electrical fault, which could involve a damaged ECU, possibly repairable, but much depends on the age of the car and the complexity of the electronics. It should be possible to open any electronic "boxes" to check for water inside. Plugs and sockets which were even only possibly submerged should also be taken apart, cleaned and dried out, as well as other electrical items.

My experience with flooded engines includes my own Land Rover completely submerged in the sea and several flooded boat engines, all recovered. The engine was not running in any of these cases, so there was no damage due to hydraulic lock, but they all contained a lot of seawater.

At least you are dealing with fresh water, which is a lot easier to deal with

The very first thing to do is to drain the engine and transmission oils, checking for water, then remove injectors and heater plugs and gently turn the engine over by hand checking for water thus expelled. The starter motor and alternator should be removed, checked and dismantled as necessary, there may be electrolytic damage to these if the battery was left connected, and the drain hole at the bottom of the clutch/flywheel housing checked to make sure there is no water trapped inside.

The fuel tank should also be checked for water ingress if possible, this can probably be achieved by disconnecting the fuel feed at the engine side and sampling the fuel arriving when the feed pump is operated. I didn't think to check my Land Rover fuel tank; although petrol reached the engine, the pump sucion is a bit above the bottom of the tank, which rotted out about 2 years later!

If the tank contains any water you have to assume it is also in the filters and injection system, especially if anyone tried to start the engine after it flooded, which could be terminal for the injection pump, so this should be removed and inspected also.

Once as much water as possible has been removed like this, refill the engine and transmission with cheap oil and turn it over with the starter motor with the injectors and heater still removed. This should expel almost all of any water remaining in the engine.

Now replace all the parts removed and cleaned/dried/repaired, and try to start the engine. If successful, run it until thoroughly hot, stop, drain and refill the engine and transmission oils. If there is a lot of water emulsion present in the oil drained, repeat the process of filling running and draining until the oils are clean.

Now you should remove water from inside the wheel hubs, lights, etc., and anywhere else which filled up.

My Landy's instruments were filled with water, but I still got them working again!

I wouldn't worry about getting bits and bobs from breakers yards until you know the mechanicals and electricals are OK/repairable.

Bon chance!

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Maybe a 'glimmer' of hope - some years ago I drove a Fiesta diesel into deep water without realising that the air intake was low down. Water was ingested and (luckily) I dipped the clutch and the engine stopped dead. Removing the injectors and turning the engine over blew out the water. The car re started.

Agreed I was very lucky but the water was deep enough to fill the footwells, we exited through the windows and pushed the car to dry ground before working on it. No damage apart from sodden carpets which dried out OK.
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Ouch.

A 1.9 D Laguna break? - I am no expert on the range, but that suggests to me its a pre 2001 model? ie the "old" style Laguna?

With water covering the floor, I will be very surprised indeed if the engine hasn't locked up and broken important bits.

All engines have to compress the air/fuel mix to work and if an engine draws water into the cylinders, it tries to compress what SHOULD be air, but water does not compress....As the engine is spinning at very high speed (even at idle, its still spinning round at least a dozen times a second...) it tries to compress the water and fails, resulting in bent conrods, broken crank or all manner of other nasties. Any of which render the engine completely scrap.

Here is one I prepared earlier.

This is from a VW Golf...

[img]http://s7.postimage.org/ckscv5t5n/DSCF0020_Small.jpg[/img]

One of the other rods separated completely from its piston and punched a hole right through the block, which smashed the external waterpump in half...

[img]http://s11.postimage.org/5ih8a3q4j/aa_3_Small.jpg[/img]

Anyway, the damage is not always externally visible either. - If this is what has happened to yours, its just not viable to repair the engine. Your cheapest course of action would probably be to source a working second hand engine.

However, as mentioned above, there are all sorts of other stuff that might have been affected....namely all the wee black boxes full of electronic voodoo that a modern car needs to work. Plenty of stuff is often located in the kick panels in the footwells or under the centre console....central locking and electric window control units, airbag control units, seatbelt pre-tensioners etc etc etc.....

Problem is....these things might still work just now.... but will they still be working in the future once corrosion starts to set in to the components?

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Tarrot.

I'd say, if you have little or no mechanical abilities, and don't feel inclined to spend more than your car (it's probably an ex-car) is worth on garage bills, to just scrap it and tell the wife to be more careful about ponds in the road in future.

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