What if your baby was driven into a lake - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

pdrayton · #1 07-12-2008, 10:40 AM

Just talking hypothetically here, let's say your 1992 300D 2.5 was driven into a pond, or retention lake at a apartment complex (for example) by someone, for example, perhaps your wife, speaking hypothetically, of course.

And what if the water, hypothetically, covered the engine, and the footwells in the drivers compartment.

What would be the steps to minimize damage and get it back on the hypothetical road?

I'm thinking take out injectors and crank it to get the water out the cylinders, change the oil, change the air filter. What about the turbo - should it be drained? Anything else the hypothetical dunker would want to look at?

hy·po·thet·i·cal: Pronunciation[hahy-puh-thet-i-kuhl]
4. Logic.
a. (of a proposition) highly conjectural; not well supported by available evidence.

TheDon · #2 07-12-2008, 10:48 AM

if the engine was running at the time it could have sucked in water and bent a rod or two. Plus those W124's have tons of electronics. Could have shorted out a lot of essential bits.

in my case, my car is fully insured. so, a dip in the lake is no loss for me.

tangofox007 · #3 07-12-2008, 11:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheDon

in my case, my car is fully insured. so, a dip in the lake is no loss for me.

How much is your insurance going to pay you when they "total" your "fully insured" car?

TheDon · #4 07-12-2008, 11:20 AM

I'd fight them to the death for $3k but settle for 2k

.. It's getting appraised next month for free by my friend that works for the county...

sixto · #5 07-12-2008, 01:05 PM

Pull the turbo intake hose and check if there's water in the compressor housing. I doubt it.

Part the exhaust junction aft of the transmission to drain standing water.

Change tranny and diff fluid.

Make sure that there's no water in the systems supported by the engine vacuum pump. It should all be air tight and air goes out naturally rather than in. Still, most of those devices have vents that lead to a fairly low level in the driver footwell.

I think the biggest challenge is mold. Get the interior out of the car and dry everything completely. Go for the full Leatherique treatment if it has leather. Make sure the central locking pump didn't ingest water. Make sure the evaporator drains are clear.

To the extent you can open the control and relay boxes, I mean open up each item, behind the battery and in the passenger footwell and dry what you can. Get a few gallons of Caig DeOxit(sp?) and hope corossion hasn't set in.

Sixto
87 300D

TheDon · #6 07-12-2008, 01:11 PM

rinse all electronics with distilled water, I've saved a few ipods that way.

you can also, once everything is dry, put an ozone generator in the car to rid it of any weird smells. Be warned, ozone can deteriorate some plastics. BG products has a product you can spray into the HVAC vents to get rid of any funky scents.

Lexxani · #7 07-12-2008, 01:14 PM

disown the chick, the dry the car out (drain all water and let her sit for a day or so), make sure there is no water in your pistons (evacuate through glowplug holes), get your fuel lines back on and crank that engine with your fingers crossed.

I'd a killed my chick if my MB had that kind of incident, that or she would be relegated to an economy car (less to ruin, im thinking her saturn), that is if I kept her around. . .in any event, I dont let her drive my 107, mabye you should follow suit, lets look at the track record here. . .

JimmyL · #8 07-12-2008, 07:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lexxani

disown the chick.........

Not a chick. It is his wife. Hypothetically of course........

jnc19610 · #9 07-12-2008, 09:31 PM

Well... my wife actually drove our Saab 95 into a couple feet of water, so.... I can say with experience.

1. get the insurance company to total the car, and take your chances the settlement is good enough. (ours was)

jnc19610 · #10 07-12-2008, 09:33 PM

2. Take some steps to save what is left. I watched our car rot at the dealership over the course of a couple of days. If water gets into the cylinder, they total it. (at least mine did) So, the real question is, how deep, how bad is it. I would dry out what you can, then see if it starts. If it doesn't then... go back to suggestion #1.

compress ignite · #11 07-13-2008, 03:04 AM

If you were going to keep the car (hypothetically)
Anything you can do to rinse the "Bad Water" [it's not Salt is it?]
out of all the little nooks and crannies in the Monocoque.(yes,Distilled)

(Oh,And hug your wife [hypothetically]. It's not her fault [excrement happens]
and she probably [hypothetically] feels worse about it than you do.)

barry123400 · #12 07-13-2008, 11:24 AM

If my wife hypothetically drove a car into some imaginary water. If this imaginary water was fresh clean water. The electronics are probably the Item to pay most attention to. Of course change the crankcase and transmission fluids. Sometimes one is lucky.

Now if the car was driven in there are some additional imaginary risks like some of the electronics may have been shorted out. But fresh fairly clean imaginary water does not conduct electricity remember so one never knows until everything is dried out. You require mineral contamination or large salt content to get any real conductivity in imaginary water.

I guess the first thing I would do is strip and dry off the imaginary wife and make sure she is still functional.

Since she is imaginary I hope she functions well for you. .Try to always find the brightside. You cannot change what is. Plus in life it can usually always be worse. Or we should be capable of imagining a worse senario at least.

pdrayton · #13 10-24-2008, 10:05 AM

Thanks for the replies guys. Somehow this thread got missed by me - looks like I duplicated it in my panic. The what has happened to the car is in this thread if you're interested.

http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/showthread.php?t=227522