Hey guys, it's been raining a lot here in Austin, TX lately and my younger brother's 2005 Civic was flooded while sitting in his apartment complex parking lot yesterday morning. The water made it up to the very bottom of the steering wheel. No comprehensive insurance because it's a $4000 car at most, so our choices are fix it or junk it.

I rented a dolly trailer and towed it to my house where we put it in the garage. We emptied out the trunk, removed the seats, center console, and carpet and got as much of the water out of the floor pan as we could, and now it's sitting there with a fan blowing in it until we can work on it more in the morning. The carpet is hanging up to hopefully dry out without smelling terrible but I don't have high hopes for it.

I pulled the intake off and found that absolutely no water made it into the throttle body or intake manifold, so my main worry was taken care of. I'm no stranger to working on cars, but I'm not sure how to proceed.

Our plan is currently to change the oil and transmission fluid in case any water got in there, check the other fluids, make sure the ECU is dried out, then pull the fuses for everything not necessary to run the motor and try to start it up. It has a manual transmission if that makes a difference.

Is there anything I'm missing or has anyone dealt with this sort of thing before? I'm expecting all sorts of electrical gremlins to show up....

Edit: Well, I managed to botch the title and it won't let me change it.

 

Water leaves deposits on electronics which can short when power is finally applied. It also corrodes connector terminals. It may be ok now, but I would assume major electronics failure in the future as all the terminals corrode.

It doesn't always work, but you can clean electronics by opening them up, wiping the board with alcohol and letting them air dry. I have no idea about protecting the terminals from further corrosion.

 

Thanks for the tip.

After changing the oil and transmission fluid (lots of water drained out of the tranny), I went through and disconnected everything in the engine bay and sprayed the connectors with brake cleaner, waited for them to dry, then plugged them all back in. Then opened up the ECU and hosed the silt out with MAF cleaner and cleaned the plugs as well.

Then I pulled pretty much all of the fuses except for the ECU/FI fuse and a few others necessary to run the engine, hooked up the battery, and it started right up!

Now for the hard part of getting it clean enough to drive again. The carpet has dried out pretty well and just needs to be shampooed but the seats are another issue, I'll probably have to peel them, launder the covers, and let the foam sit outside in the sun for a while before they stop smelling funky.

 

From my experience they never loose that stake smell. If you need new seats try here: Car-Part.com--Used Auto Parts Market