Sorry if this topic has been touched along elsewhere, I found a few similar topics but none specific to what I experienced

So this afternoon we decided to go do a bit of off roading in some unfamiliar areas, hit a few puddles and everything was OK, then happened upon one that seemed pretty deep, I'd say in reality it was 12-14", being inexperienced I wasn't sure quite how to take it but I decided I'd rather go kamikaze style at 20 mph than get stuck.

Immediately after, or actually 9/10ths of the way through, I lost power. The car basically had enough momentum to idle its way out but it was misfiring, and there was no throttle response. At that point, got out, water was still gushing from under the hood/bumper, I checked the battery thinking that water could be causing it to ground out. Dried up around the terminals, shut the car off for a few, and noticed that the drivers carpet was soaked. I waited a few and started it just to try to idle out from the middle of the trail, and noticed it has a very small bit of throttle response back, though it would only Rev to about 1100. Decided I would rather take the chance to make it back to civilization so I sputtered along for a few mins. Sometimes it would bog a little and I would shift into neutral and pick up the revs again. After about 5 minutes of that, in neutral the revs came up to 2500, bogged, then up a bit more, bogged, etc until it was back to normal. Drove out through the shortest route which brings you through a sketchy ghetto housing project type of area with mattresses and old tube televisions strewn about, then happily drove to the beach, on the sand, and through some more familiar parts

With that being said, I have little knowledge of these systems and how they operate. MyMy knowknowledge iis mainly limited to older bmw and I was thinking that more than likely water entered the cabin and made its way into the throttle position sensor, but I recall hearing about a low lying ecu in these as well and wasn't sure if that was the case.

Either way, I'm trying to get a better idea of what to look for and expect in these situations. In all honesty, the car has 312k on it, frame rot, and cost 800 bucks, so I was more concerned about getting my belongings out of it and not paying a tow bill than destroying it. I just put a deposit on a new one with a solid frame so I can have something a bit nicer. I'll take better care of that one, promise

 

It's likely that you got some water in/around some sensor connections. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd look at O2, MAF, Cam Position. With that rough running, you should at least have some pending codes. What does your ECU have to say? I went through a similar situation years ago with a car going through some flash flooding. Your mistake was probably in taking on the hazard with too much speed. Let it dry out, and it will likely be fine. If you've got extra time on your hands, check the ECU for codes, then try to waterproof the connections in those areas.

 

The O2 connectors are very finicky. I had a similar problem after spraying down under the hood at a local car wash a few years ago. I've been trying to devise a practical and effective way to waterproof the 02 connectors. Dielectric grease does not seem to be a good answer, based at least on my experience (see my thread started yesterday).

 

I think you guys hit the nail on the head re the connections getting soaked. I haven't had a chance to scan it yet but I've noticed that it now sounds like the idler bearing or something is noisy so maybe all is not well just yet. I didn't realize that my wife had a video but when I watched it, it looked like a wave going over the hood, it was much worse than I thought at the time. Note: whenever you say "wait, film this", it means that something dumb is about to happen and you should probably reevaluate what you are planning to attempt

 

I just realized I never updated this but later on this is what I found. The fact that the car was OK was LUCKY! maf was filthy as expected


I now see the value of snorkels

 

ok.. so this is going to sound stupid but...

You went thru a lot of water, it flooded your MAF and your air filter was damaged as a result. Did you take your MAF apart afterward? Was that the culprit for the power loss? I was thinking that maybe your plugs or coil got wet, causing the Rover to sputter and stall.

 

Good point, I left that part out. Codes were for misfire, Maf and o2 sensor. I noticed that when it gets really wet I'll throw an o2 code and it'll run rough so I am thinking that aside from the Maf being wet, there is probably a minor point of water ingress on the o2 plug, causing a short

 

Makes sense - thanks for the follow up. I'm looking at changing out O2 sensors and MAF soon. 150k and I don't think it has ever been done.

 

Here's another tip. Never take your truck through a place you haven't thoroughly scouted so that you know what you're getting into.

 

I can agree with that! Odd as it sounds we were coming off a section that came to a large clearing and there were a bunch of guys with trucks that looked like the duck dynasty crew sitting there in chairs staring at us with an odd assortment of pickups including a 60's Ford that was so clean I have no idea how it got there. It literally looked like someone picked it up and set it there. Wife got the heebie jeebies so we scrambled