I find it incredulous that a shop has 3 hydro locked Subarus at hthe same time!
Thanks everyone – here’s the thing. I had the timing belt replaced at around 98,000 miles by the same shop that’s telling me it’s a hydrolock. So the thought had crossed my mind that if they somehow screwed that up, and it caused the engine damage, they could try to blame it on me driving it through a puddle. I’ll see if I can post a couple of pictures of that puddle I took the next day, the white line was clearly visible under the water, and although it had probably evaporated somewhat in the 25 hours or so, it couldn’t have gone from 6 inches to the one-inch is was the next day.
When the car broke down, it sure sounded to me like something just let go, and I suspected something like a belt breaking. But I don’t know anything about cars so what do I know. It did actually start up again, because I was on a busy bridge I thought I’d give it a shot and it ran for a couple of seconds then shut down again. The tow truck driver said the same thing, he started it up but then it quickly died.
I’m planning to have it towed to the dealer where I bought it for a second opinion. I talked to Subaru customer service, I was asking them if there’s any way the extended warrantee on the 2010 Outback (which they added to cover a transmission problem I also had to have fixed) would cover something like this. That guy hadn’t heard of this being an issue with Outbacks, so he suggested I have it checked out by Subaru. I also talked to a mechanic at the dealership, he was very skeptical that a 2-inch puddle could have caused that damage. The guy at the shop where it is now told me that it doesn’t have to be a deep puddle, it’s just the water hitting the car at just the right spot to get into the engine. It also seemed weird to me that the car ran just fine after I hit the puddle and for quite some time.
Thanks again for all of your thoughts on this! Oh, and no, I didn’t have anything done to the car that would change the air intake, I’m the original owner.
This was the day after I ran through the puddle. No way am I ever going to believe that this could kill the engine in a Subaru Outback!
Subaru are famous for head gaskets going out which might account for water or antifreeze mixing with your oil and causing engine problems. You might ask the mechanic how water got into the engine and have them check your head gaskets. Otherwise get another opinion.
I believe this issue was largely solved a number of years before 2010.
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A picture of the engine damage would be more helpful in determining the cause of the damage than a picture of the water.
A workmate of mine had a leaking head gasket and it allowed enough antifreeze to enter the cylinder to hydrolock the engine when he tried to start it in the morning. He replaced the head gasket but when he started the engine, it made a loud clanking noise as it ran. “Sounds like a connecting rod” I said, so he took the engine apart again and had the parts on a work table, he couldn’t see anything wrong and everything looked normal to me too, until I looked real close and noticed one big end bearing was heavily loaded on one side. I looked closer and the rod had a slight kink from the force of going over top dead center with a lot of water in the combustion chamber. It turned out that the clanking noise was the piston skirt colliding with the crank counterweight due to the shortened con rod.
It was standard operating procedure in the days of radial airplane engines to slowly turn the engine over by hand several revolutions to make sure that bottom cylinders weren’t hydrolocked by oil leaking past the rings. If a rod got slightly bent from going over a hydrolocked cylinder, rod failure would follow rapidly as the engine ran if the pilot flew the plane.
Steam engines were also prone to hydrolock if the cylinder was not properly warmed up before trying to run the engine due to condensation.
If you enjoy to play amateur scientist OP, take a look which side of the vehicle the air intake is located. If it is on the driver’s side, seems almost impossible that puddle could be the cause. The slope of the road puts the majority of any puddle on the right, not the left. If the air intake is on the passenger side (if so, that seems a bad design) and you drove with your right wheel in the puddle at considerable speed for a long distance, I guess such a thing is possible.
In an interesting twist, the shop owner informed me that my insurance might cover the engine damage. They did. The adjuster from Amica said he’s seen this before and it can, in fact, happen when a very small puddle is involved. I suppose it’s possible that the adjuster is in cahoots with the shop owner, but I’m getting a new motor for the cost of my deductible, $500. They’re saying it has only 58,000 miles on it as opposed to the 102,000 on mine.
Si I’m calling this car Phoenix, I almost dumped it when the transmission went, then ended up getting reimbursed by Subaru for that repair. Now my insurance is going to pay for most of this repair and a rental car and the $120 I paid for the tow to the shop.
I am going to figure out where the air intake is, I’ll report back when I figure it out. Thanks again for all of your input.
The shop may be installing one of those engines that comes from Japan. The regulations are so strict there they end up replacing the engine with less than 60k miles on the car.
This is a pretty interesting thread. Glad to hear you are getting the problem resolved at a very good price to you. Like some others here, I find it hard to believe that water got into the engine and caused the damage. Especially if you didn’t hear anything unusual right after you went through the water. I suspect the timing belt slipped and the noise you heard later on was the valves hitting the pistons. Now one thing I could easily see happening is the water causing the timing belt to slip but the water would have to get into that area to do that and there is a pretty good cover over the entire timing belt area. But maybe water got in from behind the cover. Very interesting! As Artie Johnson would say.
It’s that thin opening at the top passenger side of the grill (6-cyl is the same). Did any water come over the hood as you went through the puddle?
Good for you OP for getting the problem resolved using your insurance company. That’s news to me that insurance would pay for that, and good news for change. Happy motoring
Always good to get a second and third opinion in this scenario…
Knowing that, 2010 are still in the window for head gasket problems especially with the smaller engines. If your head gasket was rotted out and engine was driven on the power end of driving some water seepage COULD do damage.
Head gasket.
I would like to know how the timing belt and cam gears are lined up after the problem happened. Since the engine was able to run a little bit after it shut down I have to assume the timing belt is still in one piece. This also assumes that the engine is a 4 cylinder and not a 6 which uses a chain. Going by the price that was quoted it seems to indicate a 4 cylinder engine.
That’s not a puddle, that’s a flooded road.
I would hope that the engine installer would perform a few chores before dropping that engine into the car.
New timing belt kit, new torque converter seal, and new rear main seal.
There’s a little too much generalizing about the life of a timing belt. It’s not just miles. Age, oil and/or coolant vapors or leaks, and environmental conditions are also factors.