I’m new here, I apologize if not in right thread… I’m reposting this from Reddit:

Car was flooded and need all the help/advice I can get!

Tbh I’m not really good with cars in general, but with a lot of googling and the great online civic forums I’ve fixed every single thing on my 2001 Honda Civic LX thus far. I’ve used my civic to do delivery gigs to pay for my daily driver until about 3 weeks ago when we had a bad storm down in Houston my wife drove it into a ditch and… well here’s what I’ve done so far:


-Took carpets and seats and dried them out in the sun

-Cleaned and used CRC Wire Dryer on every connection I could find inside cabin and engine bay

-Thoroughly cleaned control modules/fuse boxes with alcohol and used dielectric grease
-drained fuel lines and tank (didn’t replace fuel filter)

-new air filters

-flushed power steering wheel oil

-new radiator/antifreeze (radiator was cracked)

-3 motor and transmission oil changes (will do one more and use some oil treatments to be safe because water got inside transmission due to a bad dipstick that was too loose)


**I made sure I did all of this before starting it cause everywhere I looked they said starting it with water still in the engine will surely finish it off.


Now here’s the problems I’ve had so far:


-Engine light throwing code P1519; Idle air control valve (IACV)
circuit malfunction

-It idles from 1500-2500 RPMs going up and down at random times

-It sort of sputters when I drive, especially while cruising

-Automatic transmission makes a louder *thud* sound when shifting even though shifter itself is smooth

-SRS light on




I know this ain’t a walk in the park and friends have all said that I should give up and drive it up to the junker to take it out of its misery— but I’m on a budget and can’t just go buy another car right now, so any help I can get is greatly appreciated. I’m surprised the car started after all the stuff mechanics have told me honestly so I’m still hopeful. Best case I can get a year out of it and either way have learned a lot working on it!


EDIT:
Pic before towing😟
https://ibb.co/2FBF6bg

 

Was it running when it went for a swim?

 

Yea, my wife drove into the ditch and she said she tried to back out while submerged and after like 5 mins she shut it off.

 

Any chance it pulled water in and bent some rods?

Might be worth finding another PCM to test with just to eliminate that as a point of failure. Will need to program the immobilizer for this option.

 

I’m sure it pulled water in—engine was submerged while it was running—I took plugs out and cranked it, sorta squirting a lot of water out, for a few minutes before it “dried” out. I’lll do another transmission and motor oil change Thursday when I’m off before I test it again. There was some noise coming from the bottom of the engine and I didn’t know what sounds to listen for. If rods were bent, say, is the engine a goner? What kind of problems will I have moving forward?

 

Bottom end noise could be bottoms of the piston touching the crank as the rods are now too short. Or it could be the bent rods touching the bottoms of the bores as they go around. Bad news.

Probably cheapest to find another engine.

Compression check might reveal bent rods in the form of very low compression. Taking the oil pan off and putting eyes on the rods would confirm it.

 

You got that right, bad news either way. If rods were bent slightly I’ll test my luck. I’ll get the compression kit from AutoZone and check compression. If I find it’s low on all cylinders as compared to just one, do you still recommend dropping the pan? Honda didn’t make it easy dropping those pans and I’d need a new gasket if I go that route. I appreciate the feedback so much though! I’ll work on it Thursday and post anything I find

 

It's possible it bent all rods equally and all cylinders would be down on compression but not likely.

I was trying to think of ways to measure how far down the bore the piston is at TDC but I am coming up empty without expensive tooling or removal of the cylinder head. That would be the most accurate way to find even a slightly bent rod.

 

I’ve seen guys get an idea of how bad they’re bent by getting a probing cam inside chambers and check the walls for irregular wear. Honestly if I get good compression I’ll call it a day and count my blessings!

edit: you can get it at TDC by manually cranking it and checking with a cam (to measure how far down the bore piston is)

 

I ended up checking it out today and compression test results are 125 psi across the board. No variations. I didn’t think of doing the wet test cause of consistency and within margin. Thanks for the suggestion, I feel a little better about the engine now.

Idling is still fluctuating, though. It starts at a high RPM from ~1300 and when the engine warms up it goes up to ~1700 back and forth rapidly. Any ideas ad to what could it be? I was getting a code for IACV but that code went away on it’s own. Any idea on where to start tackling this?