"micky" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 24 Sep 2011 09:42:04 -0700 (PDT), Larry Fishel
wrote:

On Sep 24, 11:24 am, "Robert Green"
wrote:
Not sure what happens to fancy power doors and locks when
they're shorted.

All the cars I've had with power windows and locks had fairly hardy
circuits that did not run through the computer (likely for exactly
this reason). I would be very surprised if they didn't work underwater
for a few minutes at least.

I agrree. Water and river water aren't perfect insulators but they
don't carry current as well as wires do. At least once I've had a
non-waterproof flashight under water, and it worked for the few
minutes I used it. Then I dried it out and it still worked. .

I dunno. I distinctly recall seeing a program about a flood and people
watching from a tall hotel building. When the water reached a certain
level, the horns of the cars in the hotel parking lot began sounding.

While I believe that most door and window circuitry is rubber-booted and
generally weathproof, I'm forever cleaning corrosion off my allegedly
weatherproof charging cables. In the winter I keep the cars on trickle
chargers that are in the basement and feed 13 VDC out to the cars through 12
gauge stranded cabled. Both cars have a weathproof connector and fuse
leading from the battery to the front grille so I don't have to even pop the
hood to put them on charge. Turned out to be really useful the night the
door was iced and didn't close fully. The battery would have been dead by
morning without the charger. The are allegedly waterproof but they get
green mighty fast. That reminds me to get a small round file and some WD-40
to clean them up again before the New Ice Age sets him. I'm betting that
the eggheads have it all wrong and that in 20 years we'll be well on our way
to Snowball Earth II.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth

cousin of the:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_catastrophe

and close friend of the nickel famine:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...ne-oxygen.html

But, as always, I digress . . .

OTOH, who knows when the windows will stop working, and the window has
to be open a little to let water in to eventually open the door.

If you can even open the door. I'll have to look more closely next time I'm
in the van. I think they may operate manually. Since I am getting a new
battery this weekend, it would be a perfect time to run the "can I get out
with no power test."

Of course unlock the doors when the flooding starts.

What if you're a drunken Ted Kennedy? (-: (Sorry dead Teddy, but you *did*
let Mary Jo Kopechne die to save your reputation). I am not sure in a
flooding situation (deaths are actually more often caused by people trying
to drive through water of unknown depth) I would have the presence of mind
to unlock the doors. I believe I would be panicking. (-:

After a colllision, when everything is scrunched together and the
person may have broken bones, it can be hard to get to the seatbelt
latch, but during a flood, it shoudln't be much harder than normal,
except you may be floating off the seat an inch or two.

When I said flood I should have also included driving off into the water for
some odd reason. I spend a lot of time on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and
it's not as hard as you might think to end up in water very quickly. It's
pretty marshy country.

I think I remember someone running tests
on this (Mythbusters maybe) and it wasn't usually a problem.

Even if they proved one car didn't fail, there are an awful lot of car door
variations out there. I would assume the circuits are "battle hardened"
just because they're exposed to pretty wide humidity and temperature
changes. My cars are getting fairly old and rubber gets brittle, etc.

On the other hand, I wouldn't lose much sleep over paying $2.50 for a
punch just in case...

Exactly. I just ordered a fancy carbide tipped one from Amazon and will
pick up one for the other car when next I visit Harbor Freight.

--
Bobby G.