This may be somewhat of a noob question, I was told that If I have an intercooler my engine would shut off if I hit a puddle and water went in. Is that true?

 

No. The intercooler is a closed unit, and water can not come in there. The only place anything should be able to get into your motor is the intake, and if water gets in there while the car is running, stalling is the least of your worries.

 

are you thinking of a cold air intake? because as said above, and intercooler is a closed unit.

 

ya i must of mistaken the 2

 

Intercoolers are the radiator looking boxes in front of FI (turbo, supercharger) cars.

An intake is the tube that you see come off of your throttle body and has a round cone filter or box on the end.

If you're talking about a cold air intake, you can prevent water from being sucked up into your engine with a bypass valve. This goes in between two tubes on your intake and will suck in air from the bypass if the main filter is blocked (in your case, by water).

Oh, and like Brickyard said above, engine stalling is the last of your worries if you flood your engine. You'll most likely need an engine rebuild as water cannot compress like gas, which equals broken rods, pistons, etc.

Hope this helped.

 

Put a turbonator in the intercooler and you can avoid this issue.