Car is totaled. Learning experience? Ok
Do it again? Maybe.
But the starter motor is water cooled!!!
He should remove the spark plugs and crank the starter to get the water out. It will probably start and run at that point. Just run it for a minute and then disconnect the battery again. There might still be time. Water can get in to the transmission and also work its way in to wheel bearings and CV axles. Those parts should be repacked with grease if possible.
Disconnecting the battery saved all the positive electrical connections inside the car from being destroyed. Close all the windows and run a dehumidifier inside the car! Most of electronics will eventually dry out and work. But there can be corrosion. Don’t reconnect the battery until everything is dried out inside.
If this was salt water it would be much worse. Driving it in to fresh water first would help.
I’m goin to disagree although I have no experience drying cars out. I think a dehumidifier will be worthless. The carpet is soaked and the seats and padding as well. And th3 door panels etc. mold can start within 24 hours, then rust. You have open everything up to dry out. Pull the seats, carpet and pad. Door panels. Blowers and heat to dry things off.
Normally though, rivers are fresh water not salt water, but muddy. Yeah, electronics. See the video on bring back the mclarin, and even for two million dollars not worth it.
We have had a few cars and trucks every year break through the ice. I really don’t know if insurance ever covers them. I could argue both ways. One is driving on a frozen lake in Minnesota is a normal use of a vehicle. The other is, you go off road at your own risk.
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Whatever was damaged by the car going underwater could be fixed. No doubt about that. Whether it makes $$-sense, depends on how much repair time it would take to fix it. A diy’er could take it on as a project hobby, 20 hours a week, and likely have a pretty good car 6 months from now. But most car owners don’t have anything near that much spare time, so better to just give the car to the insurance company, let them decide what to do w/it, and use the settlement toward another car.
The electrical connectors got wet and will take a month to dry unless they are disconnected and blown dry. The damage is done, disconnecting the battery did not prevent damage other than prevented hot light bulbs from cracking.
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I see the [[[ SNOWMAN ]]] is still spouting nonsense.
I used to work for a small rental company with about 250-500 cars depending… He bought cars from the auction every week and would buy fresh water flood cars all the time, this was in the mid to late 90’s and we would replace the computers mostly only had 1 or 2 back then, all the wheel bearings (they went bad with in 1-3 months), all the fluids and removed the carpet (and everything needed to do so) to dry everything out, used big fans and time… lol
You could look under the dash (nobody ever cleans under there) to see how high the water had gotten and that would let us know how much to take apart to dry out…
Now salt water flooded cars was bad, every connector corroded and was a night mare to get ready to rent… But we would rent the fresh water vehicles out and run them about 30K miles before selling them with only normal stuff needing repaired…
It was nothing to tear into 5-7 cars at a time and disassemble them for a week at a time while still doing the normal maintenance and repairs on the other vehicles, there was only 2 of us doing all the repairs… lol
Biggest difference between then and now is the amount of wiring and computers/electronics that would have to be replaced/repaired and that in itself would make it not worth repairing… The flood cars we got were ins totaled also…
Back then I would also pull a vehicle in and leave it running for the A/C and radio and remove the air bag to swap steering wheels, when everybody else was freaking out over the air bags blowing up while messing with them… Did hundreds like that with NO issues… lol
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Don’t know if it’s from Shakespeare, but I believe the entire line is: For want of a nail a shoe is lost, for want of a horse, the battle is lost, for want of the battle the war is lost. Or something long those lines.
For want of the horse the rider was lost. For want of the rider the battle was lost. From the loss of the battle the kingdom was lost. All for the want of a horse shoe nail!
Did he get replacement car from insurance? Or buyout?
The car was totaled. It sounded like the car had just been paid for and the plan was to reduce the insurance to the legal requirement but they never got around to doing this. That was a good thing in the end.
Well I would put up a fight before paying the claim. An insured has the obligation to mitigate insurance losses by protecting the asset involved. I gotta believe there is a clause for off road use and if not at least one for ordinary and customary use. And what would a person in similar circumstances do? It’s not like proceeding on a bridge and finding out it’s gone. A normal driver would have stopped and assessed the situation before driving into a river. Ordinary care was not taken. Claim denied or at least drag it out and have some fun with it.
Yeah you have insurance but there are obligations from both parties. You can5 pull your car out into a hail storm or drive it into a burning building or even leave the keys in it or leave it running. That would be fraud. If I were them I say how do we know he didn’t like the car and was just trying to get rid of it? Then at least drop the policy and force him into risk insurance. Lots of holes in this one.
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The guy just has no common sense. It wasn’t fraud.
This is also considered a legal river crossing but usually done by locals a hundred yards or so downstream where it is a lot shallower and in pickups, not a small car. The fact that this is considered a legal river ford was a help for him although he likely didn’t know this.
It was just a dumb mistake on his part. Of course no one will let him live it down.
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I guess the computer told Google to do it as well! As mentioned, sensors may not be able to tell if it is water or a flat surface.
Sensors had nothing to do with it. The car was not a driverless car but was actually driven by a real person who drove around the warning barriers…
What if I need to make room in the garage for a car that doesn’t have hail damage insurance?
You figure it out. Like I said though an insured needs to take actions to mitigate their loss. Whether that means covering the broken windows so the interior doesn’t get ruined, or/ whatever.
I guess I assumed it was driverless. So the driver made the same mistake as my friend.
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