Can a flooded alternator stop a car from running immediately

[micky]

My brother lives on a barrier island** and 3 or 4 times a year, there is a king tide that floods not only the beach but the main north/south street. In many parts of the island, there are no parallel streets with which to bypass the flooded one (and come to think, all of them would be flooded too.)

One time years ago he tried to drive through and his recollection is that the car stalled right away and wouldn't start, and the shop said he needed a new alternator, and after they replaced that things worked.

Shouldn't the battery have been enough to power the car for a day or so?

Or is it possible with salt-water to short the alternator so that the battery won't run the car at all?

**Hollywood, Florida. My brother is no liberal, probably a conservative, but he says that he's seen global warming first hand. I don't think the street flooded at all the first years they lived there, certainly not as often.

[trader_4]

A day? Maybe 30 minutes, if you're lucky and the battery is in reasonable shape, depending on what loads are on, eg headlights, etc.

I've seen videos of cars on fire from trying to drive through salt water. It can short the alternator or anything else that's available. I guess you're brother learned an expensive lesson.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Had an alternator go out and I got just a couple of miles. If you know is dies you can shut down the heater blower and stuff but not the fuel pump, lights, computer. If the alternator is the only problem, he got lucky. I know of a guy in Orlando that water locked the engine on his 3 week old 50k Genesis.

[gfretwell]

Salt water tends to short out the whole electrical system and it would kill a battery pretty fast. My guess is that he also shorted out some other stuff that stopped the car tho. Everything is electrical these days.

I tend to call bullshit. Any actual increase in sea level would be millimeters in 2 years and certainly not enough to flood streets. That area has always had flooding problems along with Miami and a lot of other older communities in the SE part of the state. It is not so much that the sea level rose, the land is subsiding. That is what happens when you build on swamp land. New Orleans has the same issue. They also have a lot of new development that disrupts the water flow. Since the water table is only down a few feet, not much will soak in anyway.

[micky]

3 weeks. Wow.

I guess the manufacturer's warranty doens't cover that. :-)

I told him about that sort of thing. But doesn't the water have to be up at the air intake, a foot higher than the oil pan, to get sucked in. Even my brother woudln't try to drive through that. Well at least on Ocean Drive which is almost flat. If it were the bottom of a hill, I don't know what he woudl have done.

[Clare Snyder]

He got his ignition wet, and by the time they replaced the alternator it had dried out.

[Clare Snyder]

Driving at any speed creates a "bow wave" that can force water into an air inlet which is generally about headlight hight

[John Kuthe]

On Wednesday, September 4, 2019 at 1:15:42 PM UTC-5, micky wrote: ...

...

YES! Seawater is very corrosive and can "eat at" metals, etc. Same as salt on the roads in Winter rusts car bodies!

John Kuthe...

[Wade Gattett]

I looked at a Genesis- not a bad car overall.

But couldn't bring myself to shell out $50 for a "luxury car" with a Hyundai badge on the back...

[Ed Pawlowski]

They took the H off a few years ago. I'm on my second one and love it. Used to laugh at people buying Hyundai until I drove one in 2006. I've had a few Sonata, a 2015 Genesis and now a G80. Great car and a super value. Far superior in quality to any GM, VW, or Mercedes I ever had.

[Wade Gattett]

I'm driving a 2016 Toyota Avalon Limited that I bought a month or two after the 2017s were out.

Best I could tell at the time, the only difference I could see between it and the Lexus GS-350 was not having the steering wheel swing out of the way on its own when you turned the engine off, a slightly less fancied-up dashboard, a Lexus "L" on the trunk and the $16-17k that stayed in my pocket vs. the dealer's ;-)

[Clare Snyder]

Same goes for it's sister brand KIA. They are really up there with Toyota and Honda on quality - and have them beat on features and style.

[Clare Snyder]

Correct - basically fills the position of the old Crown and Cressida models of years past. Very high-content and high quality vehicles - second to none in fit and finish too - - -

[Wade Gattett]

Yeah, the Limited was the top Avalon trim line in 2016. It had every bell and whistle Toyota offered.

Overall, I like the car alot. My only gripes are:

1. The suspension doesn't do all that good a job soaking up impacts from poor pavement/shallow potholes.

1. It took Toyota three years to issue a map update for the nav system- which ain't all that great to start with. My Garmin from Costco is much better!

2. Toyota makes pretty good cars alright-- but their half-dozen dealerships in my area all pretty much suck.

[Rod Speed]

Yeah, I got my Getz in 2006. Not even one warranty problem and only the one failure of anything since then and even that might not have failed, havent got off my arse and replaced that yet.