Manufacturers tend to publish maximum wading depths for their of 4x4 vehicles but not for normal cars.
I don't intend going off-roading in my Mondeo but it would be nice to know how deep is too deep when the roads are flooded
Any idea what the maximum wading depth of an 04 Diesel Mondeo Estate is
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Not a lot!
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No wading at all, I would have thought.
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I have often wondered about a closely related question.
What Car seems to provide every conceivable measurement for the cars it reviews, but does not include ground clearance, which I would have thought might be a significant factor in purchage choice for some people - including those who do not want to by a 4WD vehicle.
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The problem with wading is the bow wave that can be created, and the way that reacts to lower-hanging parts of the front of the vehicle. A static water level might be safe, but the same depth crossed at at 7 mph might not be so.
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"No wading at all, I would have thought."
That's a daft reply! You might as well say don't drive in the rain!
I currently use the rule of thumb that if I can see the curbs both sides of the road it will be OK.
I had to drive through a patch last night which was a bit deeper than that (had to pass a broken down Range Rover as well)
The Ford website states a ground clearance of 130 mm - but how water-tight is it beyond that I wonder...
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Depends on a number of things, an important issue is how low the engine air intake is. On some cars e.g. Espace, it is quite low.
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And the speed at which you wade. goin fast can build up a big bow wave, as can the wave that washes over you from the driver going the other way,
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Remember all the Astras dropping out of the then RAC Rally because of engines hydrauliced by water as a result of wading and their low air intake position?
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Yes on some modern cars the air intake is in a silly place like behind the side of the bumper (mine is). Also, this website suggests the catalytic converter can crack if submerged in water: www.2pass.co.uk/flood.htm . Might be worth emailing Ford, but their answer may be non-committal or over cautious?
Someone posted about their engine sucking up water recently:
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=46...6
When I was a kid in the '70's there was a blocked drain at the end of our road, and under heavy rain it used to develop a 10" deep, 25' long puddle. My Dad once decided to splash through it in his Mk3 Cortina for my entertainment, but took it a bit too fast and too deep. The car conked out halfway through the puddle and would not restart. Luckily it was only wet electrics and AFAIR the AA got us going again.
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Another thing to watch out for is the location of electronic components. IIRC, the ECU on the current Astra is located low down in one of the front wings. It wouldn't take much of a wave to soak that!
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the ECU on the current Astra is located low down in one of the front wings.
Oh. My. God.
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I was advised : If you can't see the white line DON'T GO
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Moody
After years of doing flood breakdowns; I've always worked on the "halfway up the wheel" rule. If you're going at the right speed; 1 mph - about a quarter of normal walking pace - then it's fairly easy to lean out of the window and look at the front wheel. If it's rising over the centre - back it out.
Try not to even leave a ripple in the water's surface; any bow wave is effectively just making it deeper. If some prat comes barging through the other way with a bow wave the size of the Titanic's, just switch it off - if the water is below halfway up your wheels, then you won't suck any of in and it'll re-start OK.
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Noody, you do realise the difference between wading and driving through a puddle don't you?
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My method has always been high revs in second gear and around 5 mph. Always thought that going through as slow as poss lead to trouble were as if you have momentm you can power across even if the water is deaper than first thought.
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Drive in the centre of the road, then no one can cause a bow wave travelling the other way, its also the highest part of the road and therefore the shallowest wading point. ;O)
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Drive in the centre of the road, then no one can cause a bow wave travelling the other way, its also the highest part of the road and therefore the shallowest wading point. ;O)
Alternatively if you can raise your suspension do!! and drive on the pavement thats even higher than the centre of the road. Ok so not the most useful post but having got caught in heavy rain wolverhampton way last year it worked to get me out. Unlike the poor guy who tried to get out under a railway bridge only to find when he got that far the water was up to the bottom of his windows!
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Temporarily not a student, where did the time go???
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My bro-in-law miscalculated on a ford in Yorkshire while in his Fiesta 2 litre petrol. Apparently the water was halfway up the doors so he kept his foot on it and got through. Mechanically is seemed fine but from that day on it started suffering odd electrical maladies .... he got shut of it fairly soon afterward.
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Thanks for all the replies.
When I was 17 (21 years ago!) I had a knackered old mini van and I used just 'go for it'
There is a ford near where I lived and I went through it with water up to the headlights once.
I dunno how it kept going because the distributor must have been well under water!
I frequently got wet feet driving through flooded lanes.
Towards the end of the van's life, the fuel tank started leaking so I used to have a 1 gallon plastic oil can sitting in the passenger foot-well with petrol in it, with a pipe going through the bulkhead to the fuel pump. On one occasion I went though a flooded road and the petrol can started bobbing around. OK, it was very amusing at the time! :-)
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Not that I have had practical experience, but I have read about a technique of going through deep water in a 4X4 where a bow wave sits ahead of the vehicle at a certain speed thus dropping the water level at the engine bay.
No, I am not going to try it in my Passat (air intake behind headlamp).
Any off roaders care to comment or have I misunderstood?
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I wasna fu but just had plenty.
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GWS
Yes; that was a useful trick with the old Series Land-Rovers. You covered the radiator grille with a plastic sack and the engine bay was then in a depression zone in the water.
Both four and six-pots had the air intake slots at the very top of the air-cleaner housing [no filters on those!] and the six even had it's distributor sticking out of the top of the engine hard against the bulkhead. It was possible to keep those going through six feet of water, at least temporarily, as it was burning the air trapped under the bonnet.
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It was possible to keep those going through six feet of water, at least temporarily, as it was burning the air trapped under the bonnet.
..and presumably you were breathing trapped air in the cab at this point?
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woodbines
Believe me; with the [under-lit] water at eye-level, half way up the windscreen, I'd stopped breathing at all! [Never assume that the visible tops of road cones under a bridge are indicating the depth - some idiot may have put them on 5-foot poles!]
There were some very pretty fountains squirting about two feet up my trouser legs through the holes in the floorplates; but a six-pot Series III Safari contains a lot of air and it was a very welcome sight when the bonnet broke back through the surface like a destroyers bow in a heavy sea.
Amazingly; the old girl never so much as missed a beat - it was about two miles before the brakes worked again though.
I can't think of anything made today that could still do the same without add-on wading equipment. So much for progress.
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GWS Yes; that was a useful trick with the old Series Land-Rovers. You covered the radiator grille with a plastic sack and the engine bay was then in a depression zone in the water. Both four and six-pots had the air intake slots at the very top of the air-cleaner housing [no filters on those!] and the six even had it's distributor sticking out of the top of the engine hard against the bulkhead. It was possible to keep those going through six feet of water, at least temporarily, as it was burning the air trapped under the bonnet.
Actually they did have very effective air filters - an oil bath and mesh.
Of course with a diesel engine there is almost no maximum depth, as long as the air intake and possibly exhaust are above water., because a traditional diesel engine has no electrics to be affected. A sport in America is swamp racing in tractors, which are driven totally submerged.
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Cliff
Agreed; those recirculating oil air-cleaners were far superior to the later paper filters for that application. I chose my words carefully...
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When I was 17 (21 years ago!) I had a knackered old mini van and I used just 'go for it' There is a ford near where I lived and I went through it with water up to the headlights once. I dunno how it kept going because the distributor must have been well under water!
My Mini used to cough and splutter in moderate downpours. I wouldn't even have attempted a flood!!
You must have had a good 'un! :-)
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My Mini used to cough and splutter in moderate downpours. I wouldn't even have attempted a flood!! You must have had a good 'un! :-)
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IIRC the early minis had a cardboard rain deflector retro fitted above the distributor for precisely this reason.
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