Drowning a 4.3

[ihatemybike]

Now that Grumpy had truly been off roading, which included some sizable water holes and a creek run, I'm thinking about worst case scenarios. I know some engines can be hydro-locked and be brought back to running condition fairly easily and others aren't so lucky. Personally, I've hydro-locked the Yamaha JT-60 dirt bike I had in my early teens (easy fix) and recently had an incident in a corporately owned JK 3.8L (tried to fix to no avail*).

Not that I plan on doing it, but how does the GM 4.3L V6 react to being hydro-locked? Anyone have first hand experience with this?



*Not sure of the outcome. We were not able to rotate the engine at all. Turned it back in and let them figure it out. Should have wrote down the VIN to see if it was scrapped.

[mdmead]

I don't have an answer. The only engine I've owned that ingested water was a 2.9L Ford back in the 80s. (It survived.)

But if I were you, I'd just concentrate on making the air intake waterproof. Get the intake up so high that there is no way.... well, practically no way ... water can get in. On the 2.9L mentioned above, Ford had a poor design that let water easily get into the air cleaner when crossing 18"-24". I used some dryer ducting to reroute it so it sucked air from the back of the engine compartment, limiting the possibility. If I did it today, I'd be thinking some kind of snorkle system.

[Kabey's Van]

I hydro locked-destroyed an engine when I flipped a boat. It was a big block chevy turning over at 2-3000 r's, bent a couple of rods and heavily scored the cylinder walls. It was impossible and pointless to disassemble.

Peter

[Kidhauler]

The air cleaner is a long way up so you would need a deep puddle to flood the engine. That being said if you shut the engine off as soon as it started to sputter you might get lucky. If you have a couple of thousand RPM on you can kiss it goodbye nothing will live through a true hydro lock at speed. On a idle maybe.