I was driving home in some ****acular weather today, with a cold air intake (that i will never use again). Anyways, three times while driving on city streets I felt my car lurch forward, I'm guessing because it hit a puddle and stopped airflow. I immediately clutched in and coasted, the engine never died or anything, and it seems to rev just fine still. I just got home and took the intake apart, theres water in the tubing, looks like it turned pink when it hit the MAF, and it tapers off towards the throttle body. There were 5 drops, very small, on the butterfly plate, and when i pushed that back there was none in the plenum. I never reved higher than 3500 but it was fine through that range, and again the engine never shut down. Am I totally screwed? What can I do at this point, or am I fine?

 

As long as enough water didnt get in to prevent compression then you should be ok. Seems like you got lucky and were close to hydrolocking if you hit a deep puddle.

I think ive read that some people remove the spark plugs and turn the engine over a few times to get any excess water out.

convert the cai into a short ram, dry all the tubing out and you should be set.

 

From your description very little if any water got into the engine itself. If its going to bother you crack open the plenum and check, and clean it out. Obviously dry everything out and make sure the maf didn't get jacked up. Lesson learned here, use a bypass valve!

 

you didn't stall, that means the water wasn't too much for the air/fuel to overcome. If you had stalled I would be worried....you didn't bend anything noticable at least. I think you car is fine.

 

yes, lesson learned, i have the INGS +1 front bumper so I have the ram air duct, I just need to switch to ram air now... I've been meaning to do that for a while... So generally people think I'm fine because I didn't stall? Thanks for the fast replies guys, really makes me feel better.

 

If you would have done anything bad to the engine you would have known it very, very quickly... Hydrolock is a *****

 

some of that water might got to the MAF sensor. I think that's why your car acted funny. I'll guess the water in the intake tube is pink is because the oil in the filter.

 

I would tend to agree with both of these statements.

Make sure your maf hot wire is clean! If the water took any of the filter oil with it, and then that mixture got on the maf, it could cause trouble down the road.