yeh i used to have in insurance like 2 weeks ago, my contract was only for like 18 months or something and had to renew it, and as i dont have a job i cant afford 220 a month for insurance plus 220 a fortnight repayments..

ah sorry, obviously 'contract' meant 'insurance' in your previous post

hopefully you can get it fixed up dude, sounds like you got alot of work ahead

Mate, get a few cans of WD40 and go nuts on everything. Every electrical connection (after you remove the battery) you can see, and look for the ones you cant see. Get a gregory's book (try the local library) and get stuck in. Get ALL of the interior out and hose it out till the water coming out is clear, then hang them out in the sun to dry. May sure things cant lose there original shape, etc.
Get all of the fluids out of the thing. All oils, fuel, brake fluid, etc. Change ALL of the filters. Get a compressor and blow out all the fuel lines and brake lines. If the auto trans has water in it, it's probably already rooted, but you maye be lucky.
I hope you have a large shed you can work in, with lots of room for all the parts you need to remove, coz this is gonna be a big job.
IMO, if the instrument cluster has water in it, chuck it and get another one. Same with the ECU, BCM, stereo, etc.
I feel your pain, but honestly you cant drive around in that sort of car, with a big debt owing on it, without insurance. Hard way to learn the lesson, huh?
Good luck, hope you can save it.

I work with waterlogged electrics all the time in wet environments. Ive found the best way to get rid of corrosion on boards (which is what you will be up against) and the like is getting a citrus spay (available from woolies, clear bottle, blue/orange lable), absolutely soaking it in that, leave it for half an hour, then "wash it off" with contact cleaner available at any hardware/electrical store. WD40 I found takes too long to evaporate whereas the contact cleaner evaporates quickly so no chance of a short if theres any liquid left. Any electronics you miss will die later on, not by rust but just by corrosion (the blue fuzzy stuff), and that will cause weird and very annoying problems and then will eventually die.

I cant imagine how you must feel, Id be in tears if it was mine.
Good luck.

s**t man you could be in a bit of strife there, I realise its your pride and joy but with the amount of electrics in the bseries cars as soon as the interior gets wet your pretty well screwed. I really do hope you get out of it unscathed but its not looking good. I went through the 07 storms here in newcastle, driving through water over the headlights and ended up with a slightly bent rod in number 6. The big girl still fired and went like a dog shot, didnt actualy know the rod was bent until 10,000km later when I pulled the motor down.

Best of luck bloke..

hmm
first check to see if the engine oil is milky, if not no need to change it, as the water may not have got into the crank case...
aslong as the water didnt cover the brake master cylinder no need to flush brake fluid.
probably should drain fuel tank but again as long as the water didnt go over the filler neck it might be ok, as the fuel system is pretty much a sealed unit..

the diff and trans should be drained as there is no real way to be certain. the diff has a breather so there is a chance water got in there, and the auto?? well im not sure if the b series auto has a breather, if it does it should be drained aswell....

Was it running in the water and then stall? if not then you should be sweet but eventhough it shouldnt do any damage i prob wouldnt have tried to start it still wet.
For now tho dont worry about the oils ect as you need to concentrate on just getting it running.
Firstly i would just disconnect the battery and get it home in a shed or something, the interior will stink if its left in to dry so id start buy pulling the seats and carpet out or whatever got wet then clean them and let it all dry.
If it was ony 100mm inside then i reckon most of the electrical should be ok, maybe just a few blown fuses/ bad relays at the most.
Although in saying that does all the instrumentation and electrical acessories inside the car still work?
Not sure if the B series still have the body restraints module under the centre console on top of the trans tunnel carpet like the AU's but thats usually the first thing to fill up with water and bring up a heap of fault codes.
Firstly just start off by making sure you properly dry out any electrical accessory's and equipment inside the car first then start looking in the engine bay at the ignition system, relays, fuses, and anything else that has 12v or power to it.
And also take photo's along the way of the work your doing while trying to get it running, its just a precaution eventhough you dont have any insurance at moment.
This will also help to tell whats wrong with it if you post a few up on here.
If you can eventually get it running/ cranking over id then start looking at replacing any oils but from what ive found the motors, are sealed pretty well so may not even need to change engine oil but i can guarantee if it was driven for only couple 100 metres the trans oil would prob look like 3-4 Litres of daisys finest so definately replace the diff and trans oils and prob wont hurt to throw some new engine oil down its throat as well.
Look at the pics at the start of my build thread....mine was from newcastle and was found floating in a undergorund carpark, we got that running no problems and water was up to the doorhandles inside the car!

Last edited by WGN-485 on Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

that gave me a bit of relief that last post, it didnt even make it that far in the water, mayeb 20 metres, and then i pushed it out maybe 10 metres, so all up was only bout 30 metres distance. i didnt stick around in the water long, i just got the f**k outta there. but still, obviously somehting is up. all electrics inside still work, windows, dash, lights etc. but yeh, think i will start buy rippin interior out and then get onto engine, hopefully dried out a lil bit more by then, ill do it in the sun so its drying while im working. cheers guys
alex

Alex i think you would be very unlucky for it to be completley screwed given the distance, just spray wd40 and let it dry out first and re-assess changing oils etc one its started. Good luck mate dont think it will be as bad as you think.

happened to a mates BA when they first came out. it wouldnt start. he had a bigmouth scoop feeding his CAI and the engine ate alot of water and stalled. he had it tow to ford. it sat out the back because it was a long weekend so he got the s**t, went down took out all the spark plugs and sprayed down wd40. cranked it over to clear all the water etc put fresh plugs in and boom it started, rough to start with but eventually cleared up, did have a slight tick from what we rekon coulda been a slightly bent valve that eventually went away after he took it for a bash and its still running today.....

just a word of warning with electronics...

I fix mobile phones that have gone for the swim... The thing I notice... When you DON'T try to turn them straight back on, they still work fine... When you do try to turn them on straight away (ie when wet) thats when you fry stuff...

You really shouldn't have tried to start the car like that...

When you say wont start... Won't even crank? Or it does crank and wont fire? Can you hear the fuel pump wizz when turned on? Things like this help...

Just a pointof interest my dad had his radiator f**k up eg coolant trans coler mix. the gearbox guy rckons that there some stuff in there, drawing a blank on the word, but they use a water based glue, so if water gets in it f**k them, the bellhousing aren't generally well sealed, but the rest of the boxes, norrmally are, so I suspect it should be alright.

first thing i'd do is to remove all the spark plugs and see if she'll crank over then, you really want to check she hasn't got a belly full of water, i knew a bloke bent his rods in a 5.0lt bronco when water was sucked into engine while it was running, hopefully yours cut out b4 that! but pull the plugs and give it a spin, any water will come out then put in some thin oil, let it soak then wind her again to get rid of excess.
good luck with it dude!

ok, progress so far! got it home and soaked up as much water as i could in the interior. started to take seats out and realised i needed like an 8mm star bit, went to bunnings got a set. got home, realised i didnt have the right size ratchet for it. so the seats and interior is stayin in until i can get one! which is really really gay!
started on the engine, dismantled my cai and regular intake (i also have a wide mouth intake) got to the TB, realised that there was drops of wather there (i then figured thats if it got to the TB then its def in the engine) opened up the oil cap and touched the inside (not sure what the part is that i was touching) it felt sticky and was kinda like chocolate (i know that means theres water in it cos of the gold old ef had a cracked head a few years back) so jacked the car up, undid the oil plug on the bottom. atleast 1L to 1.5L of water squirted out before the oil thickened up. tried turning the engine over using a socket set on the harmonic balancer (as advised earlier) it was really hard to turn over! then it would get easy, then hard to turn over again, cut my arm up a bit and got pretty p****d off (cos i feel that this is BAD?!).. anyway, turned it over a few times til most of the oil and water was out, then put about a litre of oil in and let that drain through (did this twice) then i just put about 1.5L of oil in to let it sit in over night to hopefully collect the water ( i dunno if i was to do this but seemed like a good idea than having water swimming around on its own?!?! so thats as far as i got tonight, could it be that there is water onto of one or many pistons wich is making it hard to turn over? or is it more damaged than i think it is?? also, should i still take the plugs out and try turn it over? obviously have to take fuel rail off too??
che

Best of luck mate, this would be terrible to happen!!