Okay so tonight I had an experience that made me nearly **** myself..

It has been raining here for about 5 hours, all of which, my Cobalt sat in the driveway for. It did downpour a little, but nothing outside the usual for a late Spring, early Summer rainstorm. I go to drive my girlfriend home, we get in the car, pull out of my driveway just like usual. I get about 30 feet down my street, 1st gear, pedal 1/4 way down; all of the sudden it starts bogging like crazy. I'm like - What the hell, so I push the clutch in, put it in neutral, and it starts idle surging like crazy and dies out. At this point I'm ******* shitting bricks because I'm pretty sure water was being sucked into my CAI, but here's the problem..

I, like most Cobalt owners on here, have a small gap between my headlight and my front fascia, where the filter for the CAI resides; however, how the hell could water have built on the filter to the point where it would bog, if it just sat in rain for the past 5 hours.

It doesn't make any sense; has this ever happened to anyone else?

I'm tweaking.

 

My buddy alex has had 3 new engines in his eclipse, one time it had just started drizzling(less than 10 min) and he hydrolocked...

 

Oh christ..

If the car still runs, could there be any possible internal damage?

 

Immediately change the oil(or check it for milkiness) I would change it reguardless

 

Son of a bitch, I'll go check it right now.

What's with all these people on here saying - "Oh you need to drive through a lake to hydrolock..", my ass.

 

 

if you're lucky you might have just got water on the maf.

also pull the spark plugs and let it sit overnight to let any water in the combustion chamber evaporate.

(you could also disable fuel, pull the plugs, and crank it over and see if any water splashes out)

see how it runs in the morning.

 

I kinda wish I had a spark plug socket right about now..

 

i was also under the impression that rain would not cause it to hydrolock, although i never really stomp on it when its wet out for that reason.

 

It will, half of the modded cars in my town have had issues.

 

i drove bumperless while it was kinda raining no problem.
your MAF probably just got wet

you need to suck up water to hyhdro it

 

Yeah, I definitely saw water spots on my MAF when I took all my CAI piping off. I also still had water on my throttle plate.

The oil is completely normal in color.

..I'm WAGing my tail off (Wild Ass Guessing), and saying I got extremely lucky.

 

If your oil seems normal I would check in in about 10 miles or so just to make sure, you wouldnt have any water in there if your oil is good.

 

Thing is, I drove my girlfriend home and then drove back to my house, and that is over 10 miles.

I'm guessing just enough got down the TB, and on the MAF, to upset the engine and causing it to bog, but I'd guess most of it burned up in the combustion stroke. It couldn't have been much water anyway, like I said, the car was only sitting in an average rainfall.

Got lucky. Heh.

 

i drove my explorer through a huge puddle one time and my intake sucked up so much water my air filter was literally dripping wet. it bogged down then died then i started it up and it was idling rough then i revved it a bit more then it eventually came back to normal but i never had any severe problems. it was a bit scary.

 

Yeah, that's basically what happened. I got in the car after it had been sitting in rain for a few hours, went to accelerate, it bogged, died, I started it back up, revved it, and I was pretty much on my way after that.

I was seriously shitting.

 

invest in a hydro shield

 

thats why i used to just book through the puddles in my exploder.

 

This is why we all say you have to submerge your intake to hydrolock:
HydroLock Wiki

 

If you have a CAI you should always invest in a water check valve. I had a front mount CAI on my accord and drove through hellacious rains and never once had a bog thanks to the check valve.

 

You can still experience hydrolock without submerging, take a bottle of water and pour it down your intake with it running and see how the engine likes it... Hell take a spray bottle and it will still struggle and sputter.

 

It doesn't like it, but it doesn't lock it. Hence Hydro-Lock.

 

If it's locked it won't crank. I believe what I experienced was just a bit of bogging and sputtering, and it died twice, but it didn't "lock".

I'm sure all of the water evaporated during the power stroke anyway.

My oil isn't milky, there are no knocks or anything, I dried my entire intake system, mainly, the filter. The car rips just a hard as usual.

Lucky FTW.

 

there should no way in hell you would hydrolock from a little "rain"...you would have to go splashing through some thick water to even think about it locking....

ive heard of guys shooting little streams of water in the intake to "steam clean" the valve train and pistons...granted this was on a 3800 (V6) so it might be able to handle differently...i would never do this BTW

invest in hydro shield

 

its happened to me after the car wash. yes i pooped a little too hydroshield ftw