I got a question in my head, so I'll ask what's the truth is... Hydrolock is caused by water got suck into the chamber which makes the engine not able to compress or move the shaft so therefore it got 'locked'. But then when an engine is running, isn't the temp goes above 100C? at that point, shouldn't the water get vaporize and get suck out off the engine?

[This message has been edited by s (edited April 17, 2001).]

No, because too much water can't be vaporized instantly. The engine creates a lot of vacuum (0 - 750mmHg or 0 - 30inHg depending on engine RPM, altitude, and throttle), thus it sucks a lot of water instantly. You can read about it in last month's SCC.

For water to evaporate you need two things that you wouldn't have in that situation. Time and Room. There is not enough time between the time water enters the chamber and the time the piston comes up to boil off all the water. 2nd is room, with the piston up and things sealed, there is no room for any steam. Water takes up very little space compared to steam. To make it fit in a tiny space would up the preasure buy a lot, which would cause it to condense back to water... What I mean is that the boiling point is dependant on presure..Whatever does boil off just adds more preasure to go along with the preasure exerted by the pistion, which is trying to compress the water.

Oh, and hydrolock is cause by a LOT of water. A little bit would turn to steam just as you described. It would reduce power a bit, since it would take the place of combustion gases, maybee causing some bucking and hesitation. In fact, there are water injection systems, (SCC used one on their supercharged civic) which spray a little water in to cool things down and prevent detonation.

Make Sense?

This happened to a friend of mine just a few weeks back. He had a Civic with one of those "cold air" intake systems. He ran through a large puddle (very large) and the intake sucked up alot of water, his car was later looked at after we towed it home. We took off the throttle body and discovered that it was fully saturated with water. Status on the motor now..........DOAhttp://www.i-club.com/ubb-files/smilies/frown.gif He decided to get an is300 insteadhttp://www.i-club.com/ubb-files/smilies/smile.gif

guess the aem bypass valve might have saved him...

Room....good point. As a fireman, one of the first things we learn is this:

steam = 70 times the size of water


If your asking why we learn about that, think about what we do, then smack yourself over the head.

yup, I got it now! Thx!!

tmat3- I got confused from scc last month, but now it's all clean up!

STiTkackik- Is ur friend using that arospeed front mount intake? I found that intake is pretty stupid unless it's only to be used in track on non-raining days, having an intake expose like that... (check may scc page 149)

s- it was the "iceman" model. It had no bypass valve whatsoever, I never would have run that setup on the street for this very reason. Especially considering the placement of the cone filter.......almost right inside the wheel well.http://www.i-club.com/ubb-files/smilies/frown.gif

[This message has been edited by STiTkacik (edited April 17, 2001).]

NebScoob--Good point. However, steam injection to an internal combustion engine reduces NOx and it will increase power because it decreases the residual loss. Just my 0.02