Last night the drive home proved to be quite a challenge.

When I bought the car the dealer told me to avoid driving over flooded roads no matter how shallow the puddles might be because they had a couple of bad experiences with Minis getting water through the air intake right in front of the upper grille and killing forever the engine.

I start driving home under light rain, nothing to worry, but by the time I get down to the city, and with no other options, had to go through this flooded street (aprox. 15 inches of water). It was quite a scary experience, and I had too since I was driving in the mid lane and traffic was jamming all over.

The Mini survived the experience and got me home safe (I hope it starts again, haven´t tried). I have to admit though that after the first hard rain and flood, I come to the conclusion that the pirelli´s 175/65 15 tires are not good at all in wet roads.

Anyway, has anybody had any bad experience with Minis and floods. I´m starting to think the dealer was only scaring me and that Minis are really tougher than their looks

BTW, since the bad weather and rain is going to continue all week long I´ve decided to give Mini a break from such torture. He´ll stay at home watching TV until Friday

 

Check out this thread, including the links to MINI2.

Very scary stuff! Apparently it's very possible, and I believe that the manual tells not to drive through water over 12 inches. Looks like you were lucky!

 

I haven't experience the 15" flood myself in Los Angeles but man
that make you thinks more now while driving in the rain.
Also I didn't know about the MINI may getting water through the air intake.
Maybe the dealer was only scaring you. heheheheheh

 

mexminime:

You likely didn't cause any damage; if you had you'd have known it immediately. If water gets sucked into your engine through the intake it causes your car to hydrolock, which means the water gets into the cylinder itself and stops the engine from turning, violently.

Water is (for our purposes here) uncompressible (unlike air), and thus the inertia of the engine gets spent somewhere else--broken connecting rods, pistons, crank, etc.

:smile: Glad you made it through safely, BTW. Flood waters are nothing to mess with...

 

Indeed it was a scary experience. If I had known about the flooded road I would have taken another route, but by the time I got there, there was no other option.

Poor Mini. I´m happy Mr. Bean passed the test, but it´s not one thing I´d recommend (kids, don´t do this at home) or do again if I can avoid.

The sad thing is that floods are very common throughout the summer in Mexico City, so that means I´m going to have to leave it home through the season :???:

The "scuba diving" civic will have to take me to the office.