[Closed] Drying out a car advice anyone?

Unplug the battery, leave for a while and then remove the seats, its only 4 blotson each and 4 for the rear, they willdry our alot quicker so leaving them wont be to much harm.

the carpet has a liner under it usually about 10mm thick it stores water like nothing I have ever seen. However now your seats are out go and hire a wet vac and hoover the car thurally it'll pull most of the water out.

I have a leak in the bulkhead of my focus so the carpet is constantly wet.

Roll it onto it's side, with the doors open, and leave over night. Easy. 😀

thurally

That's impressive, and probably better than the proper way.

Used to have a Nissan 200 with a leaky sunroof. After heavy rain there would be standing water in the rear foot[i]wells[/i] 😐

Best thing to do is take all the doors off and drive it as normal.

Hope that helps,

Ricky

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Car insurers tend to write off all flood damaged cars due to the time, cost and difficulty in drying out a car, plus potential health issues.
They wouldn't even let us buy ours back, as it was categorised as CAT B I think.

It will probably stink after its dried out. Might be worth claiming on insurance?

Lots of bags of cheap rice from Aldi. Sprinkle around floor too.

+1 for the dehumidifier. I work with yachts and dehums are standard equipment. Get some of those gel pach dehums too. Unfortunately it will take a while. If your car is in a garage, open the windows a tad.

Hire a big dehumidifier and wedge it into that huge boot 🙂 shut all windows and wait...

Buy/hire a wet vacuum, suck up all the nasty water with it. Then try the dehumidifier or rice in a cup.

Then shampoo the interior using the vac on wet and suck all the water out the interior again.

I was amazed at the colour of the water which came out of clean looking seats.

I had a Vax one from memory, came from Macro or somewhere similar and was about 40 quid.

I tried to use a Freelander as a boat once, I found that parking it up a steep incline made all the water run into one place then soaked it all up with bath towels. I just left the heater on full welly with the engine running, one of the windows open a crack to let the vapour out worked a treat.

are you absolutely sure there was no water from a foul water drain in the flood you drove through?

I'd take the seats out and use a wet and dry vac on them and the rest of the car.

Get the seats in the house and dry them quick - any delay, and even if it's 'just' normal water, they'll start to whiff of old pond.

I'd do what they said but I'd consider flushing out any seats/carpet with clean water before I started drying

Where are the various computers located on your car? If they were underwater for 24 hours with the battery connected they will almost certainly be damaged. It might be okay now but they will fail a few months down the line as electrolytic corrosion takes hold (that's probably why the battery is done for as well).

Also +1 on the contaminated water problem. My boss had his car classed as Cat B after getting it flooded.

Same as above really - Ms Maccruisikeen's car has a leaking window seal that didn't become obvious until the water that had accumulated in the rear footwells sloshed into the front ones when braking.

Wet and dry hoovered it several times - it can seem you've got most of it on the first pass but after a while more oozes up and another pass with the hoover removes quite a lot more. Then put a dehumidifier in using tea towels to seal the window where the cable runs in - check on that after the first hour or so as it can fill itself up and cut out pretty quickly in the first instance (or if its not sitting level just pour water back into the car), then left on over night and that pretty much did the job,

What Mtbmatt said...

Wet vac is your best bet. Trying to run a dehumidifier in a car in cold weather may prove to be fruitless. If your still driving the car around whilst it's wet inside then heating on full pointing into the footwells and windows vented. When you've got up what you can with the wet vac then use plenty of newspaper to soak up what it can. Rear of the car is easier to dry as the carpets come up quite easy. You may wish to remove the rear seat and support the carpet to get the air moving around it. Front is a bit more difficult but again try and support it whilst to get air through it.

[url= http://www.jsdesiccants.com/superdry-drysac-desiccant-for-cargo-containers-678-details/ ]Plenty of these around the car will help too. [/url]

This is very second hand info but...electrical problems not a worry? Also If the water was manky, car will smell when dry. If the seats don't have anything electrical, you can remove them and pressure wash them to get all scum out but easier in summer...

Depending on how high the water is and what the car is worth I would be considering insurance. ie quite a new/high value car I would claim but if it's an old car you are likely to drive till it dies then keep it. how high was the water?

If still going to clean it then a carpet cleaning vac first to get as much of the water out. You could use a normal wet and dry vac but something like a Vax will flush it with water too.

Then give it a good going over with disinfectant.

Then another go with the vac.

Then get drying as quick as possible.

If you can take all the seats out then do so. It will be much easier to get to the carpets and you can give them a damn good clean out of the car and dry them in the kitchen/warm garage. Dehumidifier in the car or go at it with a hair drier and get some cheap fan heaters.

drill holes in the footwells to let the remaining water out 😀

[i]drill holes in the footwells to let the remaining water out[/i]

My Triumph Herald had special bungs in the floor for just this purpose.

I ended up leaving them out all the time as it avoided puddles, unless you parked on camber with the hole higher than the rest of the footwell.

In your shoes, if I was intent on keeping the car, I'd buy a complete replacement interior from a scrappy - sod trying to get the sewage smell out of the existing carpet.

at least try and take the seats and carpet out and maybe you could wash the carpet and dry it properly inside.

drill holes in the footwells to let the remaining water out

You may joke, but I had an old merc years ago with such a feature installed by the previous owner...

Anyway, old newspaper is very effective at absorbing moisture. Try and remove carpets and seats where you can and take them indoors to dry out properly. A dehumidifier is a good shout, but make it a dessicant one, as heat pumps don't work very well at low temperatures. You could also try bulk-buying silica gel, and dry it back out in the oven.

jambourgie - Member
Best thing to do is take all the doors off and drive it as normal.

Hope that helps,

Ricky

comment of the day.. fans of a certain canadian show will get this ...

Right, I missed some useful information i think so filling in the gaps... But really useful advice so far.

I like the car and it's only worth about £2000 so since it's not an instant writeoff (which it would have been with a dead engine) I don't want to go down the insurance route- if there's a claim to be made, which I'm unsure of, it'd be instant scrap. (also I've got maxxed no-claims and no incidents etc so there's a financial implication there) I'm pretty confident it's savable and happy with a little bit of long-term impact so that's the starting point.

The water was never particularily deep- the passenger side door was up over the sill, the driver door never went under so looking at the tide marks, let's say 5 inches on the left and just an inch or two on the right. That's enough to get the seat bases but not the cushions, so now the standing water's out it's mostly carpet/underlay retaining water. And yep they are MASSIVE sponges, it's like they're made out of Five Ten Impacts. SO I've squeezed and pushed "loose" water to the low points a few times a day all week and now that's not getting any more out. So I'm inclined to call that very damp, rather than soaked?

Luckily, the water was pretty clear and clean, you'd not want to drink it but it's barely left a tidemark. The water seemed to seep in past seals rather than pouring in so embarassingly, all the dirt and debris was in the car already 😳 So, probably a lucky escape there in terms of cleanliness.

Excellent suggestions, I'd assumed a wet vac would be too expensive but maybe not, will check that out. My brother's got a low-temperature dehumidifier as he stores electrical stuff in shipping crates, so we'll fire that in. Going to use the aircon and heating as often as possible to move air and evaporate water too.

Weather's been too crap to air it out much which is not ideal, and it's been parked/abandoned in the street up til last night so was a bit cagey about leaving them open in general but that's sorted now... It doesn't seem to have drain plugs (Mondeo estate, 2005). Oh and the windows are condensing nicely so I towel those off whenever I can.

I feel pretty lucky so far- my dad had a Passat that got wet just from rainwater and it was just ****ed from that day on, everything electrical was killed or senile. Maybe I've got some of that ahead but right now everything works perfectly, even the damn-fool electric seats.

I tell you, it still sounds like a cement mixer full of Orange Fives but there's never been a sweeter sound than when it finally fired 🙂

How "deep" did the car go? If the water inside was over or up to the central console (ie base of the gearlever) you could be looking at electrical issues in future (as things like the airbag controller and seat belt pyros are usually mounted there)

I'd pull as much trim out as i could, use heater/dehumidifier to dry car very well, then start going round as much of the electrical loom as you can trace, spraying wired and modules with electrical cleaner and then corrosion inhibitor. I'd hate to be driving along in say 3 years time, minding my business and then suddenly having the airbag go off in my face......)

Yeah, it was never quite that deep- tbh it was a pretty pathetic amount of water to get a car stuck in, I'd gone through the deep bit before i got tidal waved. I think my car just got fed up of being called a whale and decided to punish me with irony.

Lots of bags of cheap rice from Aldi. Sprinkle around floor too.

Remove seats, uses dehumidifier. Park somewhere sunny and crack the windows open, even a short spell of sunshine can work wonders if you have windows open.

Sprinkle grass seeds on the carpet - they'll soon soak up the water and evaporate it off. 😀

I had a car flooded in a ford once, about 2' of water in the whole thing. Garage just left it in their WS with the doors open and the heater on and it dried out fine. The engine needed a complete re-build as I'd had hydraulic lock and split a piston and collapsed a conrod. Got another 100k out of it after that without any issues.

@footflaps, tbh I'm still a little amazed the engine's survived, discovering water in the turbo and cylinders seemed like a death sentence but apparently I am lucky this week. Well apart from the car full of water thing, that wasn't that lucky.

hot_fiat - Member

Sprinkle grass seeds on the carpet - they'll soon soak up the water and evaporate it off.

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molgrips - Member

even a short spell of sunshine can work wonders

Scotland 🙁 Though, I had a crack at warming it by the aurora last night.

Have I missed the chance to say stuff the footwells full of newspaper and pop it on the Radiator in the hall, No?
IGMC

+1 for wet vac and park it during the day with more than one window open a crack to creat thru' draft. Close the windows at night until the summer comes, as condensation will be a big problem also be prepared for your widows to be steamed up for some weeks/months to come. It will smell too.
Good luck.

Try this:
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That should dry it out quite quickly!!!

Are most dessicant products reusable? I've got a set of dampire shoe things which are just a little bit out of their league (though they're doing their best) but they're reusable, other silica things are sold as disposable...

I was thinking that the solution for a lot of these problems is to turn it upside down- would have floated, or at least if it sank kept the carpets dry, but even now it's not too late.

I did almost exactly the same to my Mondeo a few years back. Seats out is easy, remove carpets or lift so you can stuff absorbent stuff under then remove and change it regularly until the carpet feels dry to touch. I ran a fan heater from the cigar lighter on the floor in the back for a few weeks once it was fairly dry, and a couple of those rechargeable gel packs any time it was parked overnight. Dehumidifier is favourite if you've a garage, I don't.

It's fine now, the central locking is a bit temperamental but that dates back to before it got a dunking.

If the grass doesn't work, don't forget that air con, set to recirculate, is essentially a big dehumidifier with a drain to the outside world. Have had to dry out a couple of cars this way following heater matrix failures.

Oh, and you can build a wet vac for free given about 10 minutes with a hole saw and some scrap from the tip:

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edit: Yep, you can regenerate silica gel in the oven.

At least you recovered your car, [url= http://www.****/news/article-2552943/Gone-sixty-seconds-How-60-000-Audi-abandoned-floods-picked-apart-thieves-leaving-just-shell-waters-subsided.html ]Sorry if it's been posted before.[/url]

Poundland sell those gel affairs if you need a few of them.

Think it's an insurance job though myself.

I'm currently drying my car out, but it's just got a leaky seal. Even so, it managed to get 4" of water in the footwells. Then it grew 3mm of mould all over it.

Seats and carpets out to vax, remove the sound deadening and replace. Spray WD40 over as many of the fasteners and wirings as you can find to push the water out, unplug all the plugs etc. Spray with ACF, dry it all out with dehumid, refit.

You'll want to take the seats, carpet, and underlay(sound deadening)out. Otherwise it'll take a awful long time to dry and stink. Just using a dehumidifier isn't enough as the underlay will hold a *lot* of water.

Ours was a Mondeo. I can sympathise, the air intake is very low, you are lucky not to damage the engine internals.

I would dump the seats, pick up a new interior from a breakers or ebay and wet vac the carpets and use a disinfectant cleaner if you have access to a bissell or something similar.

In true, classic STW fashion.

You need to fit a wood burner dude!.

Seriously though, I can get big kilo bags of desiccant from work, gimme a shout if you want some. They can be dried in the oven at home too.

I didn't realize my car was flooded until one day I parked it on a hill and came back to deep puddles in the rear foot wells.
I found it difficult to get the last of the water out while it was on the flat so parked it back on a hill and let the water build up in the rear foot wells again.
Definitely lift the carpets if you can.