demulsion

Due to a simple mistake and a stroke of terrible luck, my brother's 98.5 2500 4x4 ended up upside-down in his pond this morning. Mechanically everything is sound, and the motor is running again.

Electrically, however, everything got soaked...ecm, Edge box, all the sensors on the engine, the whole dash... Does anyone have any experience dealing with something like this? Is it even worth trying to fix, what with all the electrical gremlins that will continue to pop up? Thoughts, ideas, input? I know pretty much any insurance company will total a rig once the dashboard goes underwater, so that doesn't leave me very hopeful for a good outcome...

There's a bit of money tied up in it, and it wasn't insured for something like this, so we're trying to figure out what to do.

KATOOM

Everything in the dash plugs in under the dash so its up to you what needs to be replaced. I dont think I'd be too quick to trash the truck since it may be fine.

But really I'm more interested in the story.....

City Rat

It will take me a while to find the pics but a few years back I was in a 4x4 club overseas.We ran an outing with a couple of other clubs the purpose of which that week was to practice water crossings and river fording techniques. So long story short one dude from the other club was making his crossing at a point where the water was up to about the top of the cut down door of his Jeep. well the weight in his roof rack shifted and broke one of the rack supports with a loud snap. Tha snap rattled the driver and he jerked the wheel off his line and drove that Jeep into deep hole in the river completely submerging it. I mean roof underwater and all. Dude literally swam out the drivers door back to shore. As we were pretty remote and that was his ride and all his camping gear for the weekend we had to recover it and get him running. Don't ask me who carries these things on a weekend camping trip in the mountains but somebody gave dude a pair of swim goggles and a winch cable. He waded in and then dove underwater where he was feeling around in the dark river water for his front tow hooks to hook on thew winch cable and get a yank. Took him a couple of dives but he got it hooked up and we yanked him out. We pulled his starter and alternator and gave it to one of the guy's wives who had a 12v hair dryer and she got to work drying those out another lady did the same with his fuse box. We drained his contaminated engine oil into one of his coolers and a couple of the Jeep guys pooled reserves and topped him back up and spun on a new oil filter. We were there a couple hours basically while the car drained out river water and the ladies dried his electrics. Took a good couple of hours but the engine turned back over, the alt charged his batts and all his electrics worked. He drove out of there and finished the weekend with us farther up in the mountains. We even made him into a test case for a Macguyvered trail welding hookup some guy had read about to fix the roof rack. I have seen a fully submerged rig be brought back to full life in a couple of hours with a lot of hard work. Don't write the truck off yet. The one point I will make about electrics is connections and sealing before the "swim". In the incident that I described his wiring harness, relays and all other connections were not a worry because we had all spent the week before sealing and checking the seals on our electrics so they were water tight as could be because we were PLANNING on fording rivers. Since this was unplanned for your brother I would suggest that he check every connection from the front of the grill to the firewall. As long as there isn't water in the insulation around the wiring, relays, fuse box, alternator or starter motor, the rig is probably ok. Good luck.

oliver foster

Cool story City Rat.

Yeah I want to know the story behind the truck ending up in the pond upside down as well, Katoom.

sherod

Story time,,,,,,,, inquiring minds and all that......


We all have "those" moments.........

demulsion

Wow, that sounds like quite an adventure! I'd be interested in leaning more about how you sealed the connections.

The truck was in the water for about an hour, so plenty of time for water to seep into the fuse panel, etc. Other than pulling apart a connection and finding water still present, are there any telltale signs we should be looking for to tell if water got in connections or under the insulation of the wires?

Thanks for the helpful reply City Rat.

City Rat

Ok the only things that I have ever done were heat shrink sleaving over where I crimped connectors to the wires and or dielectric grease as appropriate. Now on the morning of I saw guys using dielectric or silicon grease around the seals of the fuse box or using the r ease to fill in the hole in the box where the wires exit through the grommet. In older cars I saw guys just using zip lock bags around the entire fuse box. Those are the only ways that I ever learned to seal the connections. As to how do you tell if water got between insulation and copper wiring. First just check and see if the insulation is broken anywhere ,if not I wouldn't worry about the wires. As long as the copper wire in the relays hasn't turned green or black and you are getting readings from the pins you are probably ok.That said relays are cheap just swap them out. The thing that I worry about the most is the a prolonged drowning of the alternator. I filled one with water for less than a minute or two , the water drained out and then all good. I filled one with dust and mud and it seized, duh, and had to be rebuilt. Good luck.

SIXSLUG

Blow dry that kind of stuff with a leaf blower...compressed air just pushes water inm.

City Rat

Interesting. I love new uses for gear. I never thought to use a leaf blower as drying tool. Very I teresting.

VADSLRAM

I wouldn't trash it but at the same time I wouldn't be surprised at every piece of electrical equipment that fails.
MY jeep YJ is optimized for river crossings, everything in the engine compartment is packed and wrapped and under the dash everything is as high up as I can get it...but I've still replaced 3 radios because of rain and no top, plus every stock gauge has a mind of it's own so I rely on the mechanical add ons.

Your just very lucky you didn't bend a rod hydrolocking it. That's a gift that just stops giving.

City Rat

HYDROLOCKING, now there's a term that brings me right back to my old diesel Landcruiser water crossing days. Thanks, just thinking about driving that rig made my afternoon!

demulsion

Thanks for the tips and advice guys. My brother has been checking everything over, and cleaning the interior. It's looking like we got lucky, as so far everything is functioning normally. I understand that it won't necessarily stay that way, but for now we're counting our blessings.

Vadslram, we pulled things apart and verified no water made it into the intake before firing it up. Water made it through the turbo and into the intercooler, but the intake elbow was bone dry.

12valve@heart

I've always heard to use a shop vac to suck the water out rather than blow it further in but it all depends on what's available at the time.

You might pack the truck on a shipping container of white rice like they do with cell phones.

Seriously though, products like Damp Rid may help with the interior moisture issues and reduce the chance of mold.