Hydrolocking & Top Engine Mount (Actually Fuel Lines and Exhaust)

[Eeyore]

Right people here come some questions. As said on chat facebook and my project thread it has been bucketing it down, i didnt drive through a puddle but i presume i have got water in my engine. It wont start now. Turns over but is lumpy and doesnt start.

Whats the best thing to do with regards to hydrolocking? After speaking to Jonny my plan is to remove the glow plugs and crank it over for ages to try and get the water out. Fill it up with easy start and try to start it again. If the engines f*cked it can only get worse and if its fine it will start.

Also the top mount of my engine is screwed. Engine has been knocking on the lower strut brace for months, decat is proably knocking on the subframe.

Should I buy the top mount from peugeot (£ra*e.99) , Euro Car Parts (£16) or Ebay (£9)? And is there a guide anywhere to fit it?

Thanks
Sam

[Connor]

Engine knocking the strut brace points more to a bottom mount than a top one

[Carlos182]

OMP lower brace?

[darrenjlobb]

If its turning over, its not hydrolocked...

At any point at all did it sound "tight" to motor over?

If it did, and it now dosnt, does it now crank uneven (as if less compression on couple cylinders? If so ull have bent the rods.. if it cranks as normal, i doubt u ate any water at all..and its just another issue...

[Eeyore]

OMP lower brace?

yep. thats the one. Ill take it off when i have time D:

---

If its turning over, its not hydrolocked...

At any point at all did it sound "tight" to motor over?

If it did, and it now dosnt, does it now crank uneven (as if less compression on couple cylinders? If so ull have bent the rods.. if it cranks as normal, i doubt u ate any water at all..and its just another issue...

it turns over but its heavy and doesnt catch. It does smell of diesel in and around the car. Ill check it out tomorrow.

[Carlos182]

[quote='Carlos182' pid='340509' dateline='1381521437']
OMP lower brace?

yep. thats the one. Ill take it off when i have time D:

OMP are renowned for knocking...

[Jonny81191]

I reckon it is hydrolocked, or was.. with enough revs you could have done damage then continued running and lost the water out the exhaust

[titch]

If your going to change the top mount I wouldn't buy cheap, I did and took it off within 24 hours as it was so poor quality, and the engine moved just as much with the cheap new mount as it did with the knackered one.
I then fitted a genuine pug one, and from my local pug dealer and it was only 56 quid.

[Dum-Dum]

With the glowies out give it a few blasts of WD40 down the holes between crankings as its a water dispersant and evaporates better itself so will help clear the engine.


Dont buy a cheap engine mount but Im guessing as ECP is 50% off atm that the £16 one is normally £30+ so id consider it but TBH as above it could well be your bottom engine mount.

[Poodle]

I wouldn't buy anything less than a genuine engine mount after all the trouble ive had with them, even a half-decent £40 motor factor jobby died in a few months.

[Toms306]

I was wondering (probably wrong but not gonna know if I don't ask) if the wet air filter would become really restrictive, it must've been soaked with all the road spray and I wondered if it could choke the engine enough to stall it? There's clearly not masses of water in there to break the rods if it turns over fine...

[Poodle]

If the starter motor is any good it'll have bent rods the moment he tried to crank it i'm afraid, that or it'll have popped an injector or something similar - the pressure has to go somewhere. A wet air filter certainly wouldn't do it any favours, i assumed it'd been swapped out already tbh..?

By the sounds of it (lumpy turning over) it's already done the damage. If you're lucky you just need a new set of injector washers, but get a compression test done if you can.

[Toms306]

No, I think he was turning it over with the wet filter still... I was just trying to find a slightly less expensive reason for the issue lol.

Ah well, guess we'll see what happens.

[Poodle]

A wet air filter would be a consistent restriction, wouldn't make it lumpy when turning over. Fingers crossed it's just popped an injector like mine did, £6 on new washers and she was beaut lol.

[Tom]

Your car wont start in the rain so its hydrolocked? How did the water get in there? I thought you were using a standard airbox and filter Rowell?

[Toms306]

Hes got the standard 'box and filter yes, BUT there's no intake piping to the grill, so the big round hole on the base of the filter box was just sucking in rain and road spray lol....

[Tom]

Thats all got to get through the filter though. And then get all the way to the engine without evaporating off, and then there has be enough of it in the cylinders to stop it turning over.

[Ricky]

I'm with Tom on this, unless you drowned the airbox, I would be surprised if it's hydrolocked.

[Toms306]

Hmm, you're right I guess, but it does still turn over, wouldn't think its hard to get water that far anyway, boost pipes are all oily so the water wont get stuck in them at all... Fuel won't burn with water in there though, it obviously wasn't enough to blow rods out of the block, just enough to stop it if that's what happened.

The other thing I thought is if the wet filter could restrict it enough while it was running, and the MAF got wet enough to fail maybe it just dumped in too much diesel and is flooded with that rather than water, as he says he can smell diesel, but diesel shouldn't be injected until its turning over quick enough. Was just an idea though, probably wrong lol.

I am intrigued as to what happened though, but we've obviously gotta wait for Sam to further diagnose now.

[Eeyore]

okay guys it stank of diesel today and I had less than a quarter of a tank of diesel. I had filled up £80 the day before! Put my hands under the fuel tank and they come out covered in diesel and all the pipes were disconnected and hanging off!

Hopefully that will be the problem and there isnt any other! Ill be checking out tomorrow as ive been out all day today teaching sailing and putting boats away!

fingers crossed!

[Toms306]

Pipes were hanging off what? The lift pump?

[Tom]

So someones nicked your fuel?

[Poodle]

So you never hydrolocked the engine? Wtf are you actually asking here lol?

EDIT: So what's actually happened? Why don't you tell us the problem, and we'll tell you what the issue could be lol.

[Eeyore]

fuel pipes are hanging off the bottom of the car. i presumed its bottomed out and pulled them out. no fuel to the engine resulted in it dying and not starting again. Hopefully!

[Eeyore]

Right here we go!

So I lost 3/4 of a tank of fuel and I checked the fuel lines and one had disconnected. I moved it a bit and more fuel started coming out. It was previously held together with cable ties and a few crap jubilee clips.



So I have cut off all the cable ties, removed the clips etc cleaned the pipes. They were wrapped up in some conduit wrap and were covered in black sticky stuff. Imagine that somebody had coated it all in sikaflex and then just stuffed conduit over it. I put the pipes back together and put on two new jubilee clips and di them out tight. Pipe is tight inside the other pipe now so shouldnt come apart. Also i found a little blue clip to replace the broken oem one.



There was a branch lodged under the centre exhaust pipe so i pulled that out. Centre pipe had come off its hangar and the backbox was only held on with one hangar. Couldnt get it back on by hand so jacked up the exhaust to get it on. Started the car up and there is hardly any knocking now. yay! Fixed!
Turned the key and yay it lives!

[Toms306]

Wow.

This is what it looked like a year ago -



Can't even see whats happened there tbh, it's obviously not standard, wonder if someone cut it to nick the fuel long before you bought the car and then a random piece of pipe was wedged in instead, not really the way to fix fuel lines though lol, with tape and ties.

[Tom]

But how have you lost so much fuel? Surely it cant just run out the lines it has to be pumped out? But if if was being pumped out the car would die straight away. Unless the return broke first but you'd notice that going down. Or were you trying to start it for that long you pumped out 3/4's of a tank of fuel? lol

[Dum-Dum]

*shakes head*

[Poodle]

I'm still totally lost, what happened to hydrolocking?

[Toms306]

Looks like the puddle contained pieces of tree that got caught on the bodged fuel pipe and exhaust....