But the water would have to be almost 2 feet deep to directly hit the intake...

 

With the very short overhang on the front of the MINI water is going to be thrown up in front of the car. Think bow wave. That water will find the intake.

 

I'll be interested to hear the outcome of this ... and I'm really glad you picked the #1 dealership

 

Yeah, that is the dealer we bought the car from and we had a good experience there. I am really hoping they can come through for us now!!

 

One stated theory is that our blunt front end creates a wall/wave in front of the car which is then sucked into the forward facing intake tube. I don't recall which is more prone, the MC or MCS.

 

To answer the question of why it lasted I hit a horrid puddle a few months ago wuth my right front wheel, water washed up over the whole bonnet roof windshield, to the effect of dumping a 5 gal. bucket of water down the cowl, others were amazed I didn't wreck, water got all over my filter I basically was lugging at 3k so I promptly stopped let dry for 1/2 hour, and cleaned and re-oiled the filter and made my own CAI box top the next weekend.


Have you replaced the filter (I'm assuming stock box)? Make things any better? water could have gotten past the filter and slowly worked its way down but I think letting things dry out a new filter, do an oil change and give it a try would be what I'd do before ever taking it to the dealer. This sounds like it'd fall under insurance

 

Ohhh...now that you mention it, I can see how the water would go into the lowermost grill and travel up the radiator into the intake inlet.

 

When my engine hydrolocked, it happened after 3 days of no rain..

 

Ok In The Flesh, you got my curiosity...how did your engine hydrolock with three days of no rain?

Also...anyone out there...is this problem more apt to happen in MC or a MCS

 

Wife hydrolocked our MC two years ago...it had 10K miles on it. She drove through a low spot in the roadway (during a downpour) and the water splashed up into the air intake...instant rod through the bottom of the block. State Farm fixed it under comprehensive. $6000K+. The same day ours got towed to the dealer, another came in with the SAME problem.

 

For those who have hydrolocked a MINI...any info on depth of water, speed, ride height (lowered or not) that you can give us? Just wondering under what circumstances I need to be worried. I was going through water probably 8 inches deep less than a month ago at about 35mph and I was looking through the rainy mess that was my windshield trying to avoid all large puddles. I knew the manual said to avoid water deeper than 1' but my car is lowered about an inch or two all the way around and therefore I was more worried than your average driver. I just want to avoid these horror stories of thousands of dollars of damage. I drive to class every day on a road that floods pretty frequently.

 

Considering where the filter is, the safest intake is a HAI with the openings in the cowl and above the radiator blocked off

The owner's manual for all MINIs doesn't just warn not to drive through standing water over one foot, but specifically "only at walking speed at the most" if less than one foot (including even say, 1/4") or "Otherwise, the vehicle's engine, the electrical systems and the transmission may be damaged." Conceivably the lower the depth, the higher the speed needed to cause damage, but seeing a bow wave crash over the hood definitely means it was too fast (perhaps the engine could be saved by immediately clutching and shutting it off until the water drained from the airbox).

Both MINI and the insurance companies consider careening through a puddle at high speed to be operator error.

 

True, but a deep puddle can catch you out. This past July I was driving home from the Amphicar swim in at Celina about 10:00 at night. I was on a rural state route. This was in north western Ohio. Flat as a pancake, or so I thought. The road was wet from rain earlier in the evening. My speed was about 60 which was 5 over the limit, but safe for the conditions, or so I thought. All of a sudden my car was at a 45 degree angle to the road & water was flying everywhere. In fact it went over the top of the car. My car lost forward momentum right now. I thought for sure that I'd lunched the engine. I stopped & assessed the situation. Seems as though the road dropped just a foot or so in elevation & a stream was running across it. I never saw it, all I saw was wet road. My car never stalled, but did run rough for a couple of minutes. I'm thinking the air filter got wet. I was very lucky.

 

It all depends how fast you're going and stuff, but if water splashes against your headlamps, then you have something to be worried about, and I believe that goes for most cars...

 

Thank Sucks. Hurts when something goes wrong around the holiday times

 

No idea, its still a mystery to me, seriously. The funny thing is as soon as it went kerplunk it started to rain