Celica Forums General Discussion Exterior HELP! CAI sucked in water

Any advice would help...I was driving down the street and crossed a puddle which was not deep and my car died instantly.My filter was never submerged in water so I do not know why it sucked in so much water.Then I changed the spark plugs and oil which had water in it.Cleaned the Intake pipe and it had water all in it.Also took the spark plugs out and cranked the engine but it did not help.My car starts if I give it gas but shakes and knocks and if I let go of the gas it dies.My advice is never buy a cai Intake it is not worth it.I thought this would never happen to me and it did.Now I might have to buy a new engine.

Damn that sucks man... buy an SRI, they look better then CAIs, and they will never suck water in from a puddle, unless the puddle happens to be a lake...

first you should know not to drive over any puddle, duhhhhh dont think you can go over a puddle just avoid it man, you never know how deap it is, i fill sorry for u, you should of just got SRI then, you wont have to worry about sucking water going over a puddle, get the car check, i dont think its as bad, other pplz cars wont start at all, so you were lucky take it to a shop quick thats all the advice i can give u

well you should play the lottery cause they both have nearly the same oddds o happening

um...who said the filter has to be completely submerged in the water in order to get hydrolocked?


sorry to hear that bro...good luck!

Yea my guess is ur enginie is dead. Once i think the filter sucks up water its just kills the whole engine. Thats a shame, im glad i just went w/my K&N air filter.

wow...that sux..i fell you bro..good luck on everything..now you can sell ur Cai and get SRI..hope everything work out..

shit that really sux...im pretty sure your engine is dead too just by how much water you said was in your engine...I never messed with a cai just because all my underbody plastic fell off so i stuck with my injen shortram from the very beginning

that sucks, no one on here knows how to fix this guys problem... because i know i dont know cause i never came across that problem before...

Your car is DEAD man. Always use a bypass. They cost like 30 bucks and save you a 2000 dollar engine.

Here's a question for you, can you suck water off a desktop with a straw? While not touching the desktop with the end of the straw? Of course you can.

Now imagine a straw 3 inches wide, only 6-10 inches or so above a puddle, and with 130hp of pure sucking power.


Can you do that? No? let me paint a picture for you, it'll suck it for over 30 feet straight up.

can you drive your car at all?

try reving over 4000 rpm...

if you can, then try driving it a lot and shifting over 4000 rpm and it might get the water out of the system...


if you cant rev high, then you hydrolocked.

The Intake is more than 2 feet off the road, the only way to get water into the Intake is if you go into a deep puddle with some serious speed.

I went through about a foot a bit of water earlier this summer when Coldwater flooded. Water was coming in the doors & nothing happened. I went slow though.

As you have found out, you cannot compress water. Its like hyrdraulic fluid, you can put 50,000psi of pressure & it still wont compress. So when your piston came up to TDC & hit the water it stopped it dead, possibly damaging the piston, head or bending the connecting rod & the crank. Its scary stuff.

That's why when I take my snowmobile across the lake in the summer, if it sinks you make sure you kill the engine before it goes under.

^^^ my Intake is about 4 inches off the ground

You must have a long-horn cold air induction system? Yah, that is scary, you wanna really watch that around water or you will be buying a new motor.

The stock airbox is designed to prevent water from being aspirated.

I hydrolocked once , but everything ended up being ok. I don't think I hurt anything, but if I did I have lots of friends could help me fix anything if I msesed something up. I'll probally rip my whole car apart at 100,000 and replace everything anyway so i'm not to worryed about it.

oh yea , like spaztikid said, Try to rev high, see if that does anything , maybee hold 6K RPM for about 30 seconds , like you would do if you had to change your collent.

take all the spark plugs out and crank the engine over that should clear the water out of the cylinders

but i see some one saying that you don't need ot be completly sumbrged for it to suck water but you do

the intire opening of the Intake has to be submerged get a straw and only put the very tip on it in water and breath through it ver little water will get in to you mouth you just have a fluke

I don't agree with that. If you get water on the filter, its gonna suck it in. It doesn't need to be submerged to do it.

air wants to go in the path of least resistance and that is thru the dry side of the filter if the filter is compleyly soaked it isn't enough water to to hydro lock it nisters on race cars spray more water directly in to the Intake then would get in it from a wet filter only way to hydro lock is to complely submerge te Intake

and don't rev high thats asking for trouble the poor engine is having enough trouble as is

THAT, is not true. Any amoutn of water on the ground can easily be lifted off the ground and sucked into your Intake through a variety of means. Splash from the cars before you, splash from your own tires, first rain in spring, etc etc etc.

The Intake does not need to be completly submarged, any water in the engine at all will cause a hydrolock; don't be stupid. You're sucking in water with engine power- it's a VACUUM. You think it's going to ignore the water just because you say it needs to be completly submurged? Sorry bub, but the laws of physics are above your laws.

And DONT REV HIGH for the love of GOD. Your only hope for this is to get it to a quality shop ASAP if it can move at all. If it can't move at all, you'll likely to need a new engine.

Hydrolock isn't something "me and my buddies" can fix. It's a dead engine.

One more thing, DONT take the engine apart to "dry it off"; water seeps into more areas that way and will totally ruin it more.

^^i studied that Intakes dont really suck in air but rather the atmospheric pressure from the outside pushes air in the throttle body and so in that sense, it takes a lot of water and fast speeds in order for that water to get pass the long piping and into the combustion chambers.

correct me if im wrong

or maybe we are both right. (1)During the Intake stroke, when the shaft cranks down the pistons and rods, this would create a vaccum in the combustion chamber, thus drawing in air from the outside and (2)air is being pushed through the Intake pipe by outside atomspheric pressure while the Intake value is open that in which 1 and 2 are happening all at once. Again, correct me if you disagree.

Assuming your engine can still run, i would take a long trip like maybe run it for 45 to 50 miles non stop going 65-70mph to desipate and evaporate the remaining water that is trenched inside. The heat of the engine should help with the evaporation. Only an idea.

Unfortunatly, i have experience this before, not to the point where my car died at iding but came close to that so i just ran my car a bit longer and the engine got better.

Outside automospheric pressure IS a vacuum, which is sucking, we're both right


Really, a vacuum is defined by a lack of gas particles, and that lack of gas particles of course causes a difference in pressure where outside gas particles will try and fill the vacuum area. Of course, this can never happen because the engine is always running at at least 600 rpms- so what happens is an atmospheric sucking trend- like a very very small low pressure system..

Gas scavenging- the same gas scavenging that causes NA engines to have less torque when the exhaust pipe is too big- causes these gas particles that are being sucked up to temporarily "hold on" to particles near them- IE, water. Water has this property too- but 10fold. This is why when you put water in a beaker, it will seem to "climb the sides" and if you touch your finger to a pool of water and lift it out, you'll have more than one layer of water molecules on your finger.

Thats how you can suck water off a desk through a straw without actually touching the water.

Of course, the amount of vacuum is totally dependent on the rpms you are at- and therefore the speed- but if water gets on the filter or in the Intake pipe itself, it will be sucked in.

A bypase valve (its not really a valve.. just a stupid piece of foam ) is a secondary place for air to be sucked into the CAI. Air is still easier to move through gas scavenging than water is (it weighs less) so if uhm.. to make this personified.. if the Intake has a choice, it will suck in air through the bypass valve, rather than a mildly wet Intake valve.

You're not wrong, but steps 1 and 2 of your statement are almost the same- and the 2nd step is always caused by the first step. If there were no vacuum, there'd be no atmospheric pressure difference. This is why some cars after doing engine work dont run anymore- someone messed up and there's a hose leak somewhere

As for sucking... atmospheric pressure changes causes it. It's not THAT scientific, but watch the movie Aliens where she blasts the queen alien outside of the ship when she opens the airlock think of space like the combustion chamber, the airlock as the CAI, the interior of the spaceship as the outside air around the car. And the alien queen as H20. Ripley causes hydrolock when she opens that airlock. Whoever owns that space engine is gonna be pissed off Of course, the pressure difference between the infinity of space and an enclosed spaceship on the other side are WAY different from the pressure difference of an enclosed vacuum and a normal sea level atmospheric mole pressure. But you get the idea

like i said before take out the spark plugs and crank the enigne that will help clear out water in the cylinders

a drop of water in the combustion chamber you mean. if it only took one drop of water to hydrolock then all of ur cars would have dead engines, i dont know how that shit works but maybe the filter holds up water? thats y we dont hydrolock wen it rains you know wat i mean. im not sure if you guys get wat i mean but we all know our filters get water on them all the time, if not from the holes on the wheelwell then from the hole on the fog light if it rains hard, i just hope you fix ur problem and learned not to dry over puddles, never under estimate a puddle you never know how deap it is

thanks for the explaination, im glad you took me serious

ok, it will take more than one drop, but if your Intake filer's surface area is even.. oh say.. 45% wet- you're probably gonna be screwed big time. When it rains, a shortram's surface area is unlikely to get even 5% wet. A CAI is more and more likely, especially over puddles. Don't take my word for it, go out and sprinkle your Intake filter with the hose and turn the engine on jk

Hydrolock is when the Intake becomes completely submerged & it sucks in pure water. That is not likely to happen under normal conditions. Especially with a stock airbox which is designed to elimiate most road mositure, if it gets into the front opening, it reaches the "low flow" portion of the airbox where the filter is. The slow down of air drops the sand grains & what ever else is in the incoming air.

A little water won't hurt any motor. They use water injection on some motors to prevent pre-ignition and detonation. So a few drops are not a big deal. But if you get say a 1/4 cup or more your going to have a real problem.

If the motor runs, there is no need to take out the spark plugs. Leave it to idle for a while & then take it out on the highway and heat the oil real well. All the moisture will eventually find its way out.

But if you sucked in enough to damage the engine & it is knocking, you need to have it rebuilt. Don't mess with it & make it worse.

Isn't atmospheric pressure about 22 to 25 psi?

ok where's the guy with the car problem here??? don't seem like he have anything else to say..tell us if u're actually doing what other people are trying to help you with..we need feedback here..

Hydrolock is when your engine gets enough water in it- the engine doesn't give a shit about the condition of the Intake.

You can say hydrolock only happens when the Intake is completly submurged, but there are a lot of people out there who are thousands of dollars poorer because they hydrolocked without their Intake being submurged at all.

I reved the engine at 5 rpm for about 25 seconds and the engine quite knocking and shaking but still sounds rough and dies at idle.But it sound 10 times better and a neighbor that is a mechanic took a look at it and says it sounds like my timing belt slipped.Thanks for everyone 's advice.

so then it wasn't the CAI

For the love of god, don't bring it to a regular mechanic! Bring it to an import dealer of specialist. If he screws with your timing, he could kill your motor.

UPDATE I took it to a mechanic and the #1 connecting rod is bent so the engine is shot.

Ohh dude, I'm so sorry to hear that.

All is not lost, you need to rebuild that motor. Once you get it torn apart, you have the get the machine shop to check that your crank isn't bent. If it aint, its probably worth rebuilding.

is the aem bypass worth buying, does it accually work????
or is it better to go with a SRI??? and what is the difference in HP?

holy crap..that really sux..man hope you can come up with the $$$ to rebuilt it or get a diff.. car..good luck..

Is the cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? It's the same thing, just explained differently.

Air goes from an area of high pressure to low pressure, the Intake is creating a low pressure and the air around it goes to that low pressure region.

BTW the AEM bypass valve is a crock...I am not going to explain why as I do not have the time. But trust me it'd make a marketing major jump with joy knowing that he fooled a lot of people into buying a piece of crap.

First... atmospheric pressure is 14.7 lbs.

Second, Hydrolocking is not as uncommon as one may think. My boss's daughter hydrolocked her civic twice already and had to have the engine replace both times. Think carefully before buying a CAI, especially since its only goign to net you 1 hp.

Same thing happened to me. I ran it for a little bit...not pushing it just driving normal. It started working fine after about 20 miles. Does scare the shit outta you though...

too much technicalities for me

Either US versions of cars suck donkey, or you guys have some pretty special rain/water over there. Or the CAI's for the celica is designed specifically to suck water into the engine. My dad's running a 250bhp audi a4 with a blitz filter, and a friend of mine's got a 500bhp audi s2 with a cone filter. and we live in norway. it rains here. A LOT.
and, still, no problems. And they've had Turbo cars with cone filters for years. still, no problems at all.

But, then again, it might be just me beeing a dumb ass again..

all you have to do to avoid puddles is to let off the throttle when you hit the puddle. Little or no throttle = little or no vacuum.

damn dude

that's crappy as hell

can't believe it actually happened

UPDATE!
It turned out I needed a new engine so I talked to my insurance company.The insurance company paid for a new engine because it was considered flood damage.My previous engine had 75,000 miles on it so everything worked out for the best.