popejooie

so im driving home in my 97 ex and i hit a decently sized puddle. nothing completely terrible happens when i drive thru it but my CEL starts to flash (its always on usually because of cat, iat, iacv) and its driving in limp mode. i get it home and the next day take it out to see if the problem stays. at first the CEL flashes and it runs in limp for like 5 mins then it runs normally. anyone know what could have happened? the same thing happened both times i drove it around today.

RotaryPWR

are you running a cold air intake?

TurboTron

water in your combustion chamber from either your intake pipe or splashed up on your wires and down to the pugs...or water in your distributor cap

popejooie

yes on the intake. water in the combustion chamber is what i would have guessed but then why does it run normally once it warms up?

RotaryPWR

well limp mode comes on if the ecu detects a major change in the signals running to it. in this case, sounds like water in the chamber caused a sensor to show a major change, whether it be due to vacuum or oil pressure, a bad O2 reading, or knock or whatnot. a flashing CEL means that something is occurring that can seriously damage the engine..

during the time that the car warmed up, a lot of the water probably ran through and out of the engine. the ecu detected that all signals were ok, and exited limp mode. the sequence probably happened a couple times since not all of the water exited the system after your first drive.

somebody with more knowledge on water in the system or limp mode should probably chyme in since i'm pretty much just guessing here..i'm not sure what other effects water can have other than it causing hydro lock since it's not compressible..

is the car running ok now? or does it still start off in limp mode?

Vindicator9000

Take it to autozone and scan the codes. Pull the plugs, wires, and distributor cap and check for water.

I ran mine through a bad puddle awhile ago. I don't even have a CAI, and I had water in the stock airbox. For some reason it fried the O2 sensor and I had to replace it.

Checking the codes is the only way to narrow down the problem without throwing random parts at it.

popejooie

thanks guys for all the input. as far as current running condition its about the same pre-puddle. ill go have them scan the codes again and see if anything new popped up.