so yesterday **** hit the fan weather wise for about 30 mins across town, i was driving when it went down but i luckily didnt get in an accident with the **** visibility and high winds shaking all the cars on the road. but the aftermath is what got me. driving down a street and bamb engine power reduced on the DIC, CEL and i could tell the motor was shutting down. no standing water i was moving but im lowered on h&r + CAI. i was able to turn to a side street and park ish but when i try to start... nothing.

I contemplated calling roadside but it was a saturday night no one in the world is going to look at it before monday so **** it, i just left it. fast forward to the morning and it almost started better but still nothing. called roadside to pick it up but said hey let me try it again before they get it on the flat bed. it turned over and stayed on. idle had to be like 500 or something bc it sounded way fucked up. kept it going and reving it as a shower of water + white smoke came out of the exhaust.

I eventually drove it home to let it sit in the sun for the rest of the day, Even thou it stopped doing most of the fucked up **** it was still iffy. Come tonight it starts right up and drives as normal as i can imagine. I havent got on it but otherwise seems fine. I dont really plan on taking it to a mechanic now but im going to change the oil asap (hopefully in the morning) seeing as it needs it and cant hurt. anyone else have any other recommendations? Im just playing it by ear and thankful/hoping the engine is ok

 

Smoke and not acting right, but running okay now... Maybe your MAF got wet and it went pig rich?

 

idk man a puddle came out of my exhaust. oh and when i drove it for the first time DIC said power steering failure or something like that (never did the PS recall) but power steering was restored shortly after. and pre driving it the DIC was gone: it showed trip a --- trip b --- coolant temp --- ect but it all came back when the power steering warning went away

 

if water was coming out the tailpipe it likely got a gulp of water. now when you say it wouldnt start, would the motor turn over, or was it locked up? if it turned over and just wouldnt fire, id bet the maf just got soaked and caused the problem. if it was locked up, you are going to have some bigger issues. when you take a motor, even at idle, and fill a cylinder enough to hydro-lock it, something has to give, like a connecting rod bending. if that happened you may only notice a small power loss, it could run just fine. my co-workers 4.3l boat motor hydro-locked 2 cylinders and bent the rods, they had no noticable power loss, only found it during a rebuild. however, if the cylinder did hydro-lock and it wouldnt crank over, the water leaked past the rings overnight and is now in the oil.

id recommend doing a compression test right off the bat, itll let you know if you have a bent rod or any other internal damage. if it checks out, change the oil, put some cheap conventional oil in, drive it for a couple days (take it easy), drain it out and fill it with fresh synthetic. hopefully there is no serious damage.

 

strange how smoke and water would get dumped out of exhaust like that? maybe the water was there before hand. never heard of water being dumped out of exhaust

 

mm like 50 50... right after it shut down and i tried starting it it really didnt do anything. otherwise most times it would "try to start" . like the starter would take a lil longer then normal to get it to turn it would sputter sometimes once then die and a few times like it would sputter for a few seconds then die. i wanna say it turned over every time say 30 mins after the car shut off at first.

im not sure what locked up is so idk if it was or not. i checked the oil first thing in the morning and no evidence of water. i was happy for that even thou it still didnt "start"

white

 

lol yeah... im sorry didnt read OP right...

could be valve stem seals ? or head gasket? not sure... if it only does the white smoke once it should be okay... how often does it shoot white smoke ?

 

Hydroshield..
I had to get one because my car wouldn't accelerate at all after a big downpour.

 

well define once. when i got it to run for the first time i left it sitting running for at least 30 mins if not 45. idling or reving and i wasnt constant but more then 60% of that time white smoke was coming out of the exhaust. when the car started running more normal it reved and got the normal black smoke but went back to white for a bit. after shutting the car off it hasnt smoked at all of any color (that i know of... i haven't drove it at all aggressive so it shouldnt have had black smoke)

i have one, or at least i should... mind u its an AEM sheild and the filter is K&N but it fits. i think im going to invest in a new one thou its been on the car for a while so it wouldnt even surprise me if it just fell off the top elastic wasnt as snug as i would assume it should be but i always thought thats bc it was on the wrong filter

 

SAME SAME SAME thing happened to me three years ago. It ended up being fine. Hopefully yours is too

 

If it hydro locked the motor would have completely seized, like the pistons would fuse to the cylinder walls kind of seize. I'm sure it's fine, it probably just took in way too much water and everything was too wet. I don't think a hydro shield would have even helped with that much water. Only thing you could have done was turn the car off and wait.

 

When my daughter drove her cavi into a flooded road it stopped dead. Had several inchs of water in the car. I pulled the plugs and cranked it over blowing water out of the cylinders. Drained the oil and got about 7 qts of oil water . . Next we drilled a hole in the exhaust pipe and got a ton of water out of it. Added fresh oil and plugs and it fired right up blowing more water out the exhaust. Let it warm to operating temp. Drained the oil and changed it again. cleaned the water out of the car. Insurance company totaled it anyhow and Daughter got a new Balt. I bought the water damaged one back cheap and sold it to a friend who had it for 4 more years.

 

You should be fine as others have said. My .02 is to definitely get a k&n hydroshield. I had the same issue as tyler after it would rain so I put one on. About 2 weeks ago we had the hardest rain I've ever seen here. I got stuck in the middle of it on my way to work and couldn't see cars 20 feet in front of me. Car never had an issue and I know without a hydroshield I would've been up **** creek

 

I'd pull the plugs to make sure everything looks ok, but sounds like you just waterlogged the air filter and sucked a little water in the engine.

I used to get drivability issues in the rain with my K&N because I had no fog light on the drivers side, so just driving on wet roads with traffic I would get the filter wet, throttle response would suffer badly and the car would in general drive crappy until it sat for a couple hours and dried out.

 

My old cobalt lt.. Well I had water over top the hood from a drunken evening in a flooded street. My car sucked up so much water lol. Really don't know how it didn't blow up from me trying to crank it over and frying the stater lol After having my car pulled to the garage we shopvacced thenhead well pretty much any where we could put it, the oil pan had a liter of water in it. When I started it is said all the same things you are saying and sounded like a subaru and wouldn't idle without flooring it. I had gallons of water it seems coming out of the pipe lol. It ran fine for 8 months until I sold it. Really surprised me and lesson learned

 

did it start normal next day and forever more? today its been sorta weird starting but otherwise normal

 

Next time you think you sucked in too much water this is what you should do. Stop driving it immediately and take the wires and spark plugs out. Crank the engine and the starter should spin things enough to where the water shoots out. Its what I did when my meth pump malfunctioned and unloaded the entire 2.5 gallons of meth into it.