So for those that don't keep up on California weather, we just had a major rain storm go through Northern California. I normally park my S in the garage, but I had to leave it out last night because my roommate was doing some work on his car and need the whole garage. So I get in my car this morning to go run some errands and I'm sitting in my car letting it idle for a couple of seconds while I put some stuff away in the "glove box". After idle for about 5 seconds, the car dies all the sudden. I go ahead and attempt to restart it and after about 1 second of cranking the motor, I don't like the way it sounds so I stop. Taking into account that I have an AEM style intake, some of the horror stories that I've heard on the board, and the large amount of rain that fell overnight, I'm thinking I just hydrolocked my motor. So I jack up the RF side of the car and drilled a small hole in the bottom of the intake and water starts flowing out of it. All in all, I figure I collected about 5 cups of water that was in my intake. After taking the spark plugs out and trying my best to dry out all the water that was in the cylinders and on the spark plugs, I put the plugs back in, and let it ripe. After about 10 nervous seconds of cranking on the starter, the motor finally kicked over and started. I took it out for a spin afterwards and everything seems to be ok. Here is a pic of all the water that drained out of my intake.

Oops, changed quarts to cups.

 

You should change you oil right away. At least twice, the first time would be to clean out the engin of any harmful material. Then drain the car, and put new motor oil. This would assure you that your engine is clean of water or harmful liquids.

 

Same thing happened to kitwetzler with his 04.

 

How is it possible that this water was in the intake ?

How did it came in.... ? ? ?


Oeps, sorry... just saw that you where in a rainstorm and that it did not came in due letting the S outside with a rainstorm

 

if water was in your motor, your bearings are killed.
it will make a little noise/ticking, then gets louder and louder.

 

I believe 5 quarts would damn near fill the entire AEM tube...that much water should freely fall out of the filter due to gravity. I'm missing something...

 

The problem with the AEM intake and all the other ones that use the same configuration, is that the filter is tilted upwards. The intake pipe actually travels down and then bends to the right across the radiator (when looking at it going to the engine from the filter). This allows water to run down into that section of pipe and then doesn't allow it to flow back out with gravity.

Look here: http://forums.s2ki.com/forums/showthread.p...7&highlight=AEM

You can see what I'm talking about in these pics. Also, you can see water spots on the bottom of the splash guard which obviously came from water dripping on it from above.

There has to be a "leak" somewhere in the front bumper that allows water to just pour onto the K&N while it's sittign there. Obviously if you haven't driven through deep water, it's gotta be pouring in from above. Not good.

Kris

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by MacGyver
I believe 5 quarts would damn near fill the entire AEM tube...that much water should freely fall out of the filter due to gravity.

 

Well, there wasn't much water in the motor, so I'm hoping the bearings are ok. No usual noise from the motor, so no apparent damage yet.

 

this is exactly why i will stay away from cai intakes. the extra 2 hp is not worth it at all.