Today’s floods: Will her car start? I don’t know.

This morning my wife texted the above photo from Shandon, with the simple message, “Think it will start?” She’s referring to her half-submerged Volvo there. I called her right away, and she said it was higher than in the picture, and still seemed to be rising.

I don’t know yet. My advice was to wait until the end of the day (she’s taking care of the Twins), and try then. Give it some chance to dry out.

I like it when she calls me and asks me stuff like I have special knowledge on account of being a guy. It’s like “Car Talk.” I should have asked her to imitate the noise it was making. I imagine it would have sounded like the opening of “Splish-Splash.”

But there was one thing I could do, as one of the Twitterati. I Tweeted her picture, and it got three reTweets, one by WLTX, with the added words, “Crazy flooding!

Speaking of TV stations, WIS has a gallery of crazy flooding pics from this morning.

9 thoughts on “Today’s floods: Will her car start? I don’t know.

  1. Kathryn Fenner

    Herb– I live on the Henderson Hill (700 block), beloved of hikers and and ROTC trainers–and parked cars sometimes roll down it when it’s wet—of course, their tires are barely legal…

    Yeah, just let the car dry out thoroughly to avoid sucking water into the engine or shorting out the electrical components–especially on a Volvo!

  2. Steven Davis

    Unless there’s water up to the air cleaner, there’s really nothing to “suck into the engine”. If the water didn’t get above the bottom of the door there’s not much to worry about, if it did, I’d be more concerned with wet carpets and future mold problems than with a wet engine.

    But what do I know, I only restore classic cars as a hobby.

  3. Doug Ross

    See, now my first response would have been “Why did you do that?”. And that would have eventually turned into a large payment to Reeds Jewelers. But I’ve only been married 25 years. Still learning.

  4. Kathryn Fenner

    My nephew, who has been working on his 93 Sentra for about ten years now, using all manner of custom-fabricated parts–so he knows a thing or two (now)– managed to wreck one, if not two, engines, by driving them through deep water and sucking water up into the engine. Maybe it’s a feature of the Sentra….

    Leaving the car open, in a covered space, should prevent mold, no?

    So did the car start?

  5. Steven Davis

    So where did the water enter your nephew’s car… through the air intake.

    You dry a car out just like you dry anything out, heat and preferably air movement.

    If the interior is wet, you’re going to need to vacuum as much of the water out as possible… which means pulling the seats out. The carpet may appear to be dry, but the pad is going to be soaked. If you don’t get it dry soon, you’ll be airing it out because of the musty smell.

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