Hydro-locked engine need advice from other who have done the same.

[turboglenn]

Well, i had to cross a part in the road with about 8 inches of standing water in it and although i went as slow as possible to try and avoid sucking up water the next thing i know the motor is dead, it won't even crank over...

SO,, I push it off the road, get a ride home and come back with a truck, tow rope and a spark plug socket.

Sure enough there was TONS of water in my engine, probably at least a half gallon extra in my oil pan, not counting what shot out of the plug wells as i cranked the engine over. I then dropped the IC pipes and got another gallon or more from them.

After getting it started and running again I flushed the motor 3 times with new oil and drained it after running it for a few minutes on each batch of oil.

Since then the J&S knock sensor is picking up a ton of noise anytime i get into it, but there's no audible change in the way the motor sounds. The car is actually idling and running under light load better than it ever has, but now it's making a ton of noise which i know isn't detonation because the way the J&S is displaying it does not match the way it normally acts when detonating... Plus 15 psi on E85 at 11.5:1 shouldn't knock anyway... Then sometimes (once every 5 tries or so) it pulls like normal and only displays 1-2* of timing pull at 30psi (i let the J&S decide when to give the car the last few degrees of timing )

Revving in neutral it doesn't make this noise, only when under a load but accelerating hard (1st and 2nd gear mostly) But if i lay into it slowly it can build all the way up and run fine like it use to.

There's no oil in my anti-freeze, there's no more water showing up in my oil or as condensation in the valve cover either.

The only thing i can think of is that when i got it started with the original water soaked oil and revved it up a few times and that maybe i wiped the face off the bearings with those few short revs to 3500 - 4k and now they are making noise. The motor didn't immediately lock, it's just motored down like the spark had died out (which it had)

Any ideas or thoughts on this? If it wouldn't have started only after a hydro-lock, i would swear that the noise is from something else like an accessory pulley or something , but the internals of the engine were the only parts really effected... I doubt the head or block are cracked, and there's no signs of a severely bent rod or anything...I"M STUMPED!!!!!!

Anyone ever hydro-lock one and get it back running again or tear it down to find anything particular wrong besides the few things I've already been keeping an eye on that would cause this kind of noise in the motor

IF no one has any thoughts i think i will put all new rod and main bearings in as soon as I'm caught up on money (2 weeks or so when i collect some bill I've got out to contractors i did work for) but until then i am going to baby the car and try to avoid "racing" anyone or giving anyone a taste of the mitsi out of fear of throwing something out the block

I also NEED new axles, my fronts are so bad that anywhere between 40 - 65MPH the car shakes so hard that you can't even see out the mirrors and everything in the center console and glove box rattles and drives me nuts... I'm just too broke to do anything but wonder now

P.S. Now i wish i would have had the J&S in my last motor that was machined wrong and would eat main bearings every 500 miles, at least that would give me a worn bearing "noise pattern" to look for on the J&S's display.

 

[architechnik]

While I was living in New Orleans I had the same thing on an oldsmobile. It was their version of a DOHC and the intake was a CAI down low. It sucked the water right into the engine. My bearings were in the oil pan... just about all of them.
Have you dropped the oil pan or did you just drain the oil? The lock up usually comes from water replacing the oil and it losing all viscosity or the water turning to steam and expanding far too rapidly for the normal engine operation and at the wrong time.

Did you check your transmission? Maybe it seeped into the bell housing somewhere.

How was your alternator? With how low it sits, you may have had some debris float into there as well.

 

[turboglenn]

the water was only that deep on the passenger side of the car ( where the cai is located). i'm off to work, hopefully i will get to pul the pan this week.. i've just had to work too much to get time to mess with it

 

[99gst_racer]

Damn rainfall. It's flooded everywhere.

Compression test to make sure you didn't bend any rods.

Also, make sure that water didn't mess up your compressor wheel when it passed through.

 

[Savage Talon]

My parts car was caught in a flood over the dash, (that's whay I bought it as a parts car). I drained all the fluids including the gas tank because water was in everything. I got it running again and it seemed normal for a couple of weeks. Then it spun a rod bearing. That is just what happened to me, and it happened when my wife was driving it so it was not being beat on. If I was you, I would drop the pan, and pull the bearings to have a look. Also do a compression test to see if you might have bent a rod.

 

[turboglenn]

Well, from my past experiences in the auto parts world, I've seen insurance cover this type of thing before. So, i'm hoping that i can claim it (haven't had a claim in 7 years) and with the money for a motor swap and turbosharger from mitsubishi (insurance must use OEM) then i could finish building my other block, get the turbo i want, and maybe even the new axle shafts i need. We will see, i need to call my agent and find out what they woul want from me.for proof or an estimate.

Either way i will throw in some new rod and main bearings, i ordered them this morning actually and a pan gasket.

 

[r1991_4g63t]

this is way too many nice DSMs hydrolocking in omaha....

 

[turboglenn]

this is way too many nice DSMs hydrolocking in omaha....

there's more??? Do tell...

 

[r1991_4g63t]

off the top of my head i can think of three others, two n/ts though, but one pretty well built GSX,

from one of the n/t. guess that sticker that says removie if driving in more than 12in of water is there for a good reason

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[r1991_4g63t]

at least yours is still able to run... as you can see that one was done for, the other half of the rod went through the pan into the filter housing.

 

[turboglenn]

Ouch! I guess I'm lucky to have had the idea to go as slow as possible and keep the engine RPM's as low as i could while going through it. The damn thing is now that i've re-designed my IC pipes to allow me to use the stock fans, the path from the turbo to the stock filter location is blocked. I use to turn my custom/home made CAI pipe up into the engine bay for winter and rain season, then put it down in the bumper for the summer. Now i have to some up with something else to avoid this in the future. HOnestly i was shocked at how much water got in there for no deeper than the water was. I mean only the bottom 1/4 - 1/3rd of the filter would have been touching water, i thought that it would suck through the path of least resistance as long as the turbo wasn't spooled up *shrugs*

OH well, I guess i'm lucky i can still drive it because i've dumped my entire savings into my welding business for mahcinery, supplies and a new generator to run my welders and i couldn't afford to rebuild the motor if i had to.

 

[r1991_4g63t]

yeah i know the gsx did what you did, made it out with a bent rod i think. the pic above happened going south on 480 just past hamilton as it goes down the hill, well there was a lake and he was doing 50ish with no where else to go but swimming

 

[banishedmunk]

pull your oil pan and grab the rods where they meet up with the crank and see if there is any side to sde movement. if there is then more than lkely you shed a bearing due to lack of lubrication due to the water in the oil.

 

[turboglenn]

pull your oil pan and grab the rods where they meet up with the crank and see if there is any side to sde movement. if there is then more than lkely you shed a bearing due to lack of lubrication due to the water in the oil.

Well, i know i haven't lost,spun or shed a bearing yet. But i do think i may have wiped the first layer or 2 off of one or more. I know what a bad bearing in the crank and mains sound like and the motor is completely normal when listening with a stethescope, but the knock sensor is pickinb up some loud noise under boost and on all cylinders (supposedly)..this means the sound is resonating equally through out the block as normally you will see the cylinders as individuals each with their own amount of timing being pulled usually within 3-4 degrees of each other. Or, it means that the noise does not match to the actual firing event of the cylinders and is just a noise from a pulley, loose flywheel or anything else that can transfer a large vibration into the engine block (my AC compressor can, but this isn't the same as when it causes PK )

The weirdest thing is that it's today it was more and more intermitent, but i still don't want to take any chances. I can pull 3rd gear at 30psi and 1* of timing pulled on one or maybe 2 cylinders, then 20 seconds later i can be at 13psi in 1st or 2nd @ half throttle and all cylinders get 10* pulled all at once and the meter goes crazy giving and taking timing in huge increments, which is the same effect you get if you hit the knock sensor with a small brass hammer. I've tested the J&S's function to be sure it was okay, and it was since everything but the sensor it's self is in the cockpit.

I think I'm ust going to replace the bearings and then get my other motor finished ASAP just to be safe so i can rip this one apart. It's ready, but i'd hate to put eagle rods on stock pistons just to get a motor together. My biggest fear is that the head got damaged as i just had this head completely re-done a few years ago. I have another head that came from a JDM cyclone/vr4 and it's got some one's porting job on it (was ported before it left japan) which could be a good thing, but it is a 1.6l head too so i'm kinda iffy on it's stats compared to the 4g63 2.0l head.

 

[4g63awdtalon]

jdm 1.6l head has the big ports with the 43 cc combustion chamber. It will bump your compression. If at all i would check your rods and wrist pins for damage.

 

[tkelly27]

I'm not pushing my car as hard as you are, but I didn't notice a bit of difference between the 2.0 head and the 1.6 head I had. The 1.6 came from an eagle premier or something like that, the sedan.

Won't rod knock go away when you have enough oil pressure and or engine load? The oil fills the passages at a rate that the knock no longer happens? Unless your bearing is spun, then it sounds like a little hammer over and over again.