On Wed, 04 Sep 2019 16:17:00 -0400, micky
wrote:

In alt.home.repair, on Wed, 4 Sep 2019 15:14:19 -0400, Ed Pawlowski
wrote:

On 9/4/2019 2:15 PM, micky wrote:
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.

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.

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