I had a Civic that may have been a flood car too - at least, the carpet was new looking enough to be suspicious. It seemed to have subscribed me to the electrical gremlin of the month club.
I had a Civic that may have been a flood car too - at least, the carpet was new looking enough to be suspicious. It seemed to have subscribed me to the electrical gremlin of the month club.
I won't complain about Copart and IAAI getting flooded (ba dum tshhh) with flood cars.
Bunch of guys in the VOA lost Vipers and other really high dollar stuff in this storm. I am already getting calls to buy things once they get dried out. Like last time I will pass on every single one.
Allegedly thee is a LP640 that got flooded up to the bottom of the windows as well.
Drying out a Miata today.
The danger is not with cars that are insured for this sort of thing, it's with all of the $2-5k cars that don't have insurance. Pretty much every one of them will have someone attempt to save it. Fluids, dry it out, and most of them will start and drive just fine. For now.
Wait, you did something to that Miata? I thought "no carpet" was their natural state?
The simple cars like Miatas should be pretty saveable. The complex ones would cost too much time / money to even consider it if they took more than minor damage.
Take it apart as far as practical, clean / dry everything you can, especially in areas where crap will get trapped and cause rust.
If it got wet enough to worry about wiring damage, find a crashed or rusted to death one up north and swap the wiring harness.
Once that's done, there shouldn't be a whole lot to worry about for future water-induced failures.
CRC Industries Flood Be Gone Spray should do the trick.
If they don't make it, they should.
I suppose you can get W D 40 by the Gallon, use with a Bug Sprayer.
Other than body panels and properly cut out things like inner fenders/frame rails for low production/older models I wouldn't bother either. 
Maybe springs/struts. There can't be much moolah in such parts but maybe better than Moog for other suspension hardware. 
sleepyhead wrote: Wait, you did something to that Miata? I thought "no carpet" was their natural state?
It was actually a really nice 20k mile MazdaSpeed Miata a couple of days ago. It still is, but now the really nice carpet is on the lawn. 
Flood insurance write-offs are how we get most of our department bait cars. We dip the electronics in wd40. The cars are completely disposable so other than some smell the main problems we have are from damage or abuse.
Even if the electronics are okay (they aren't) the water will wick grit into every cable, channel, and bearing. Switches and motors will fail at a phenomenal rate, as well, because of the fine GRIT that the water brings with it.
There's a REASON why insurance companies would rather total a flood car than repair them. They're not stupid and they don't like spending money they don't absolutely have to.
Now, bear in mind, that CLEAN water leaks wreak havoc on cars. A rusty windshield/A-pillar is a sign to run the heck away from a used F-150 because most of the electricals get dripped on by clean rainwater. Now imagine what not so clean flood water does!
In reply to Knurled:
That's true, I don't want to sound like I'm saying that flood cars are fine. We only keep our bait cars for 2-3 years before they are absolutely destroyed by being repeatedly stolen so we don't care about long term reliability
Police department bait cars? Not following...
turtl631 wrote: Police department bait cars? Not following...
Bait for people who are either stealing cars or breaking into cars looking for something to steal.
Yeah, dude, they did and entire TV show on it called Bait Car.
I'm pretty sure that CRC Industries DOES manufacture a Flood Be Gone spray, I KNOW that they make Bald Be Gone in a spray, they market it under the Hair-In-A-Can brand.
If you have no ability to inspect for flood damage yourself, then this is where car fax actually comes in very handy. Simply look for any indication the vehicle was registered anywhere near a flooded area. if so, stay away. simple. This still doesn't save you from cars that were driven to the flood zone from out of state or something, but those numbers are small compared to the overall amount of vehicles involved. The cars do tend to migrate from a flooded area to another state entirely to be sold, so shopping several states away isn't always good enough to avoid flood cars.
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