My Injen sucked some water into the engine, and it is now hydrolocked and probably looking at havin to replace the motor. A word of advice, Don't talk to your wife while driving down a road in the rain that looks kinda flooded.

Later,

Ray

 

Yeah, there's a guy in my town with his car at the dealer right now getting a new engine for that exact same reason. Had an Injen, hydrolocked the engine. You might want to consider an AEM or Nismo with the bypass valve on it. That'll prevent you from getting hydrolocked in the future. Or, maybe use a JWT Popcharger since it sits up in the engine bay. Your intake temps will be higher, but there's no chance it'll ever suck up water.

 

Or just a new panel filter for your stock intake since the aftermarket ones do exactly nothing except make a cool noise.

 

I'm not saying this isn't what is wrong with your car, but I would bet money it's not hydrolocked from the intake.

I have the injen on my car and it sits fairly high up. High enough that if you drove into water that deep, it would most likely damage other things as well, and possibly flood the cabin of the car.

Think about how difficult it would be to suck water up that intake. First off you would have to completely submerge the cone filter, which means the water would have to be ~16" deep. Second, your car would have to remain running long enough for suction to be created and then keep running long enough to suck this water up the winding intake into the plenum and into the motor. Only problem with this is, the car would stall as soon as suction was created as the car needs air to run. Trust me, I have driven through a puddle that has completely submerged my filter on another car. The car will stall before the filter gets fully submerged.


Not only that, think about the volume of water that it would take to fill up your intake. I would guess it would be more than a gallon, maybe two. This is a lot of force/pressure to be "sucked" up by a motor, especially a motor that would have stalled due to no air getting to the motor.

IMO, it's not hydrolocked, you have some sort of other problem.

 

Further, the Injen can be run in short ram configuration during the rainy season if your area is prone to flooding.

Chris

 

You are indeed correct. The stock intake is a fantastic intake. However, the sound of the aftermarket intakes is *so* nice. I actually switched back to stock for a while, and it was simply too tame sounding. I'll be the first to admit that I run an aftermarket intake for nothing more than the sound.

 

Does the by-pass value come stock on the AEM CAI?

sorry to hear about your car ... I know how it feels to have something you enjoyed be taken away for a long *** time! ... my Xfire had a bad install of a ECU and it was out for a month in a half cuz I did it about 2 - 3 months after the car came out ... no one had any spare ECU's for fixing it...

 

i may switch over to a JWT... not cuz of this im not worried about water injestion... but i want the JWT whistle...but i dont have my Z tube anymore... and i dont wanna swtich the injen over to a short ram becuase it would be hot w/o the heat shiled

 

wow sorry bro!! what street was it i live in murrieta!!!

 

Not sure. The Nismo does come with it, but on the AEM it might just be an option. They do offer it, though. The Nismo actually just a re-branded AEM, so they should be identical.

 

Thanks for the response! all this stuff is scaring me... looks like Popcharger ... pretty much the same gains and noise!

 

The engine stopped about 10 feet before I reached 2nd street while driving down Ivy (Old Murrieta). I hope it's something small, but after I got out of the water the car wouldn't even turn over. I talked with the guys at the Infiniti service and they had just completed replacement of a hydrolocked motor from the last storm, on a car with a stock intake. Zivman, I hope it's not, but I was traveling down a road with the water running down it (Looked like river) . And with all my other mods, I'm not closed to any possibilities of what went wrong. But if the motor doesn't turn over and you can hear the starter trying to turn, I think the it's siezed and hydrolocked. It wouldn't even turn over after I got it to the dealership, and that was about 2.25 hours later.

Later,

Ray

 

In this case, I would guess it to be electrical. I would look for a bad ground, maybe a bad battery, or most like a short somewhere. I think a vapor locked engine might be whats going on as I find the chances of actually getting like 1/2 -1 cup of water up that intake into the engine, very unlikely.

In this situation, it could be a thousand things, but hydrolocked would be down my list a ways.

Did you drain the oil yet? If so, what did it look like? Also, did you pull your spark plugs to see if they had moisture on them?

Try another battery, check your fuses, and electrical if the oil and plugs seem normal.

I know lots of other people from other forums that had been scared in similar situations and just let their cars sit for a couple days and they fired right up without a problem. Good Luck

 

Well, I talked to the guys at Riverside Infiniti. They took out the spark plugs, cranked the engine and had water blowing out all six cylinders from what they told me. They said they ran the motor after lubricating it, and it was running smoothly. They will be doing a compression test to make sure all is well and hopefully calling me back by the end of the day (couple of hours to go). I guess these motors are pretty strong huh? Well I'll keep you guys informed.

Later,

Ray

 

Good to hear they got it running. It takes a lot of water to hydrolock a motor. Sounds like you're in the clear.

 

sounds good, glad to hear the motor is working.

 

Good deal. Sounds like things might be okay then. It's funny, because I was just about to post that you might want to take out the plugs and crank the engine to see if it blew water out.

 

That...S U C K S...Razorx35!!

jreiter...that's why i made this homegrown sheild and larger cowl to feed my hungry popcharger

 

Nice. Have you done any intake temp tests with a scantool to see if it made a difference?

 

No, I haven't... I don't own that type of equipment.

They way I look at it from a material and physical standpoint, no metal, no heat soak. The bin is LDPE (low density polyethylene), so it will get soft, but never melt. As a precaution I put some foil backed sound dampening material on one side. Seems to be working great! I use my Z as a daily driver.

I tried to design and make something with the same intent as our OEM airbox, but with the idea of a lot more air flow, thus the larger cowl and conical air filter. I really like the way it performs so far...