Hi All, hopefully someone else has experienced this and can help.
So yesterday here in sunny Albuquerque we recieved a good dowsing of rain. As I was headed home from our washed out soccer game I was driving in the left lane "where the rain gutters are" and pushing ALOT of water maybe 12 or 15 " when I got home my 96 disco 4.o was sputtering and farting badly, I figured i just got something wet and it would be fine after it dried.... wrong!!! now when I start it ,it runs fine for a couple of seconds and the resumes its rant of backfiring running rough and smelling like sulphur I also noticed my catalytic converter on the pass side was glowing red and the entire exhaust system was extremely hot..
any advice or help would be greatly appreciated. thanks Mark in Albuquerque

 

Unhook the battery and on the passenger fender is a big black box with some wires coming out of it in front of the washer bottle, that is the trucks computer.
Remove it, open it, drain the water out, dry it, put it back, hook up the battery.
Report back when done.

 

Replace the cat.

 

Its about time you got some rain down there!!! Shoot its been so dry up in the east mountains... Really scary. I have a cabin east of tarajaras. I don't think I spelled that right.

 

It is a wonder it did not catch on fire!

 

A glowing red cat means it is getting raw fuel dumped into it and it is burning the fuel inside the cat.
There is not a problem with the cat, it is with the engine getting more fuel than it can combust.

 

It can mean that, but you cannot (or should not, anyway) say a blanket statement like that. On my disco, it meant the cat was getting blocked, because the catalyst had come apart, and would get turned and block the exhaust. It would happen almost every other time I went through water deep enough to get the cat wet.

 

So guys , I put a call in to Robert at southwest rover and he concurrs with the not the cat theory. he believes i am dumping too much fuel causing it to heat the cat. as for the computer on the pass fender, I did not find one just a small fuse box that was dry. I may have to bite the bullet and put it in the shop!!! ugggg. any more suggestions?? yesterday I drove it and it made it about 10 blocks before starting its rant. @ anticreti, yes we are dry here and these flash floods dont help any. its too dry to absorb the rain and just runs into the arroyo's and on to Texas!!!

 

The computer is under a small plastic cover right up against the firewall mounted to the inner fender.

 

Now I'm nearly certain it's the cat. It took 10 blocks to build up enough pressure to start acting up.