There’s something about destruction that fascinates the human mind. It’s in us as children, when we topple our block towers. It’s in us as teenagers as we watch monster trucks roll over the rusty husks of old cars. And it’s in us today, when we watch a poor French car choke itself to death in deep floodwaters. It’s a sound quite unlike anything else.
The video comes to us from Tom Sunderland, a YouTuber who specializes in flood videos in the UK. You know the sort—where foolhardy drivers plow on through deep waters, only to see their cars come grinding to a halt. Typically, if you see a YouTuber filming next to a body of water, that’s a great sign you shouldn’t drive through it. Still, people do every day.
If you’ve seen one of these videos, you’ve seen them all, but this one has something special. It’s all about the sound … because there’s something hauntingly beautiful [Ed Note: I dunno about “beautiful.” -DT] about the death rattle of this forsaken Renault Clio.
Mistakes Made
Many of these videos showcase overconfidence and bravado, but that’s not the case here. We see the owner gingerly taking a cautious route into the waters. They proceed slowly alongside the kerb, which appears to be the shallowest area on the road.
Despite their slow progress, they soon come to minor grief. As water crests the hood (bonnet in the UK), the car slows to a crawl, then lurches to a stop. Restarting the car fails, so the owner gets out to push the vehicle to safety. It’s an easy enough task with the compact French hatch. It’s here they should have given up and called for help, but they would make one further mistake.
With the car now out of the water, the owner attempts to restart the car once more. Amazingly, it bursts to life. We know this because we see steam billowing from the exhaust pipes. That should have been a clue to shut it down—it was a clear sign that the engine had taken on water. Nonetheless, the Renault is pressed harder, and revved higher—and then it happens.
The sickening crack, snap, and rattle of an engine blown to pieces. The steam recedes instantly, a small trail wafting away into the air, as a thick stream of oil pours on to the road below.
The aftermath is quite something. Poring over the scene of the incident, Tom Sunderland found a hell of a mess. Not only was oil spread all over the roadway, but there were huge aluminum chunks of engine block left lying on the tarmac.
The cause of the destruction was hydrolock, which happens when water gets into the cylinders of the engine. The problem is that unlike air, water is not particularly compressible. The damage occurs when the piston rises on the compression stroke. When there’s water in the cylinder, the rising piston can’t compress it at all, but it has the crankshaft and connecting rod forcing it upwards anyway. Normally, this causes the connecting rod to bend or snap, and it often takes a big chunk of the engine block with it. It’s a surefire way to destroy an engine in mere seconds.
In this case, this Clio’s engine is pretty much irreparable. If there are chunks of engine block on the ground, you’re going to want a whole new engine. It’s interesting to note that this appears to be a very recent model. It has the tail lights that debuted on the 2023 facelift of the Clio V. A shame to see it destroyed so young.
It’s no surprise the engine failed in this manner. Commuter cars are not built to ford deep water, especially when it gets up over the hood. Had the owner backed out early, or perhaps even avoided restarting the car, they might have had some engine left. But by forcing the issue, they condemned this fine Renault to an early grave. A shame, but something we can all learn from.
Image credits: Tom Sunderland via YouTube screenshot, MichaelXXLF CC BY-SA 3.0
My brother managed to bend a crank rod in or Honda wagon by driving too fast through a puddle. The intake is for some reason connected to the inner fender. It didn’t cause the engine to fail, just run very poorly. The dealer managed to get it covered during some other covered warranty work.
Customer states drove slowly through a small puddle, now vehicle won’t start
Customer states after oil change dealer performed 5 weeks ago engine makes horrible sound and won’t run
Another shop changed the oil
He could have made it at a no wake speed
I have seen the aftermath of a few hydrolocked engines. The really scary ones are the fuel hydrolocks.
I have seen:
Mid-2000s Toyota Corolla, got into flood water high enough to float the car and it ingested water and stalled at relatively low rpm. They pulled over, removed the spark plugs, shot the water out, and proceeded to drive it home and then another 50k+ miles. It was eventually traded in and almost immediately totaled by the new owner.
NC Miata – heavy rains and an aftermarket cold air intake behind the front bumper, bent all 4 rods.
1990 Miata – Wiring issue caused one injector to stick open(discovered later). Friend asked me to come help because it seemed like the starter wasn’t working so we attempted a popstart. I didn’t look at the car beforehand. When he dumped the clutch I heard a metallic “clunk” and the tires locked up. Popped the hood and fuel was pouring from between the block and head. It bent the rod on that cylinder. They put one new rod in it and continued driving it but sold it soon after.
We were in Australia recently, and I was impressed with the number of vehicles that had snorkels on them – you almost never see those in the U.S. I guess the video explains why.
Most snorkels exist to get the intake up away from the heat and dust kicked up when offroading versus for water crossings. That isn’t to say there aren’t better sealed ones that exist for water but few of the widely available ones are up to that task.
Ah – gotcha.
Honest questions here… say you make the mistake of going in too deep, and the water gets in, but you don’t try to restart the car. What do you have to do to get the water out? What is the likely damage at that stage? Is there something you can do on your own to drain things, or should you just wait for a tow?
Remove the spark plugs, that way the water has somewhere to go, when you crank the engine over the water will shoot out the holes.
Correct, and that’s not something you can practically do roadside in most cars, so for all intents and purposes, yes, you’re waiting for a tow at that point.
Cheaper than a new engine.
I’m pretty sure you can easily do this roadside on most transverse 4-cylinders.
It only gets trickier with transverse V6/V8s where the rear bank is covered by the intake plenum, or longitudinal V6/V8s where the last cylinder pair is jammed against the firewall under the windshield.
It really depends on WHY the engine stopped. If you merely drown the ignition, if the water gets in once the engine is stopped, then you can take out the plugs and crank it over. BTDT with a Series Land Rover. But if you sucked water in with the engine running, the damage is likely already done. That Renault was already toast with likely bent rods the FIRST time it stalled given the jerk it made (that was the motor locking up). The starting it and revving it finished the job as the bent rod(s) let go and created additional crankcase ventilation.
An old mechanical injection diesel with a snorkel can be fun though – I learned to drive in an old RHD diesel Series Rover with a snorkel. My uncle drove that thing through water over the hood a couple times. Get the speed just right and you won’t even get much in the cabin. Don’t try that in a modern diesel with electronics and emissions gubbins.
There’s now video proof of at least one newer Defender in the UK using half of it’s fording capacity in the real world. I am quite impressed at some of the smaller cars making it through though, with water over the hood, but seriously wonder what the drivers were thinking
Most cars can handle some water getting in the air box and intake, they are designed to drive in the worst rain imaginable or a car wash + idiot wiggle room after all. Air boxes are designed to drain water and an engine can ingest a little water without damage
What really killed that little CUV was the driver flooring it through the bow wave at the end. If he had maintained steady speed he probably would have made it okay.
On the surviving cars. I would be worried about water getting into transmissions/differentials/transaxles/etc via vent tubes
I was thinking the same. He sped up to much at the end. Speed is a huge issue with these fordings.
My Old Corolla actually has a plenum for water to fall into between the air intake and the air box its about 5litres with a one way drain at the bottom to allow any water that gets sucked into the engine to hopefully drain out. I’ve not seen anything like it any other car.
Speed and throttle application in this case, more throttle = more vacuum to pull in water, and the whole wave was happy to oblige
Shoulda had a snorkel.
I absolutely do not need to go anywhere when there is that much water in the way, and I doubt he did either. Idiots, all of them. Even the guy in the Nissan 4×4 was going waaaay too fast thru there IMO.
After college, I worked in a Turbo Vacuum company. These would spin at 27K rpm (they were like small jet engines inside), and we would burn them in by running them at high vacuum and venting it to atmosphere. One day while when the burn in was going along, someone vented the unit, and a spacer was missing. The thing went from 27K to zero RPM in a fraction of a second. I will neve forget that sound.
lol as an “end user” of turbo pumps, I have heard that sound a few times..
I also ran instruments that used turbo pumps, and I’ve also heard that sound. The next step after that was cleaning a lot of bits of aluminum vanes out of the manifold.
That’s it. I’m putting a snorkel on my ’98 Civic.
It looks like it happened because he tried to speed up and was pushing a wall of water.
Making a bow wave is actually good as it pushes water out of the way but he tried to drive through it when he sped up.
I’ve never heard a piston motor hydrolock in person, but cannot forget the sound of a scroll compressor being fed a large gulp of liquid refrigerant through the suction line: sort of a ‘clack—CRONK’. One of those sounds you instantly know means it’s time to wander off while the perpetrator makes the uncomfortable call to the boss.
Back in ’87, the Des Plaines River was flooded for miles and miles. We needed to get across and my buddy threw his ’71 Olds 98 into the water hard. Some of it did come up over the hood, but we made it without issue.
Of course, back then we were dumb kids who didn’t know what hydrolock was.
It’s a 2017 Clio, I think? The number plate indicates registration between September 2017 and March 2018. The two numbers change every six months, where registrations between March and September will have the last two digits of the year (so from the first of March it’ll be 25). From the first of September until March of the next year the digits are the previous year plus fifty (so it’s currently 74).
However, owners are able to purchase personalised number plates for their vehicle, although they have to match the current or a previous number plate format, and must be of the same age as the vehicle.
So for example, ‘PI55 OFF’ or ‘BU66 ERS’ would be valid plates for this vehicle (although they’re banned for being rude). So conceivably the owner might have bought a newer car and put an older plate on it, but it looks to be the correct Clio for the year to me.
Yep, by no means a Clio V. Facelift IV at most, with non-OEM taillights.
A lot of cars have intakes through the grille (and/or just below the hood) for a reason.
They the air is usually routed through an airbox that can serve as a sound dampener and also a “water catch” for heavy rain, snow, bugs, small birds, or anything else you might have picked up along the way. Then that detritus has to fight gravity to go through a filter before hitting the intake. As others have stated, this might be partially a design flaw (in addition to the obvious driver error). It should take a good bit of effort to ingest water. Like full immersion to the level of the intake.
I can’t speak for all the cars in the world, but all the ones I’ve owned or worked on had pretty foolproof airbox designs. (if you have a CAI or an intake that’s routed near the lower bumper, your odds get a lot worse)
I haven’t hydrolocked a car quite yet but when I was younger, we had an ’04 Buick LeSabre. One day we were driving around after a severe storm the night before and we hit a puddle that we just plowed right through not know just how deep it was. Turns out the water was high enough to come into the interior and it stalled. We sat there a few minutes panicking that we lost our only car (we didn’t have another car nor the money to get one). My stepdad decided to crank it over and that battle cruiser started right up. That car ended up scrapped with 336,000 miles or so.
That LeSabre had a 3800 Series II, and one of the design parameters of the 3800 V6 was “must survive apocalypse levels of owner abuse or neglect”; it’s extremely difficult to kill a 3800 but it can be done.
Many, Many Moons ago, I was living in the east Ocean View neighborhood of Norfolk.
One afternoon a hurricane was coming, and I was driving my old Volvo 144S home when I hit a big, big puddle of water that was actually part of the ocean/bay that was washing in over the street.
When the water started coming in the car thru the opening for the gear lever – it was time to back out.
That’s how you don’t hydrolock your car (or get washed out to sea)
We’ve gotten lucky a couple of times in hurricane-related flooding.
The first was when the remnants of Hurricane Floyd hit NJ. Driving home from work, I planned my route to stay at the highest elevations. And wouldn’t you know, near the highest point, a tiny stream had turned into a river 100 feet wide. I watched as a small, non-lifted pickup crossed successfully, and I figured my ’90 Calais could handle it. It did, more or less, stalling just as it cleared the far side of the water. I let it sit for a bit, restarted, and with a few hiccups it carried on. That was a crude but indestructible engine.
Hurricane Ida caught my son by surprise, and he ended up driving unfamiliar roads in the dark in an ’07 Legacy, which was on its third owner just within the family. At one point he plowed through deep water and made it across, but it was clear the car was in distress. He found a safe spot in a parking lot to wait for morning and then limped to a spot where I could pick him up. A local garage made it minimally drivable until he could replace it–the flood effectively killed the car–but at least he didn’t hydrolock it.
After Hurricane Milton last fall I had dropped my mother off at here place and had to drive through a flooded area on my way to my place. It was just deep enough to need caution, but I knew my Mercedes has the air intake way up high. So I was proceeding at the correct speed to keep a bow wave away from the expensive bits. Of course, some flaming asshat in a pickup truck had to haul ass past me and send water absolutely crashing over my car. Thankfully, no harm, no foul, but what a jerk. Couldn’t go slow for the 30 seconds it took me to go through the low spot.
My mother lost a V6 Camry to Hurricane Ian a couple years ago. She evacuated to a friend’s place on the other side of the state, but Ian dumped 2′ of water on that area as it went out to sea causing a retention pond to overflow into the guest parking area. Oops. If she had stayed home she would have been perfectly fine.
I’ve seen some of those videos and I’m truly astonished. Hydro-locks can happen, sure, but this (the floods) seems like the way of life in those parts and those shlobs should really know better by now, no? I don’t know how many cars get killed but judging by those vids, every single one of them, with rare exceptions. They’re either utterly ignorant and stupid or folks over there are so fucking rich they think nothing of destroying a car.
And yes, if you see anyone filming any sort of crossing, turn the fuck around. There is a very good reason they are filming and odds are not in your favor.
Monetization (noun): money being made by YouTubers at someone else’s expense.
Don’t be the latter.
Clio-ly this was a stupid move.
The unmitigated Gaul of this driver.
Come on now, there’s being Franc and then there’s being rude
Sometimes you just have to know when to baguette up.
IYRYR
If you Renault you Renault
IRR?
Renault, Renault, Renault your boat
Gently through the stream
Rattly, rattly, rattly, rattly
Repairs are like a scream.
Encore!
In the key of Renault, of course.
Very much a renault-nault
A friend of mine hydrolocked her Clio engine going through a relatively shallow flood. The intake system sucked air from just behind the bottom edge of the front bumper, so you could hydrolock them without all the effort of finding deep water. A well placed mug of tea would do it.
I have not-hydro locked and engine (yet haha) but when I first got my FJ I may have gotten over zealous at an off-road park in the midst of spring and got stuck in a giant puddle (well two puddles) and turned the trans fluid into what is described as a milk shake luckily the previous owner had purchased a Toyota extended warranty and the dealership by me was cool as hell and replaced the trans for free. Now I know be careful as hell when fording water and also have raised all my breathers up much higher.
My nephew called me last year at 10 o’clock at night. He followed some of his buddies pick up trucks through a puddle in rural Wisconsin and Hydro locked his Nissan Ultima that he bought from my mother-in-law, his grandmother. I told him there was nothing I could do to fix it and that he needed to calla tow truck and have it hauled somewhere. I knew what had happened and he hydrolocked it and that was it.
My brother hydrolocked an E46 M3 way back when (2000ish?). I was surprised that his insurance covered it.
Stupidity is covered (generally).