Hi all, I am new here and have potentially done something daft.

 

While driving my partner's 2015 Mk3 fabia in some particularly heavy rain earlier there was a section of flooded but flat-ish road, about 25 metres long. I pulled over and watched a few other cars go through, most took the centre of the 2 lane road along the dashed line and appeared to have no issue, there was clearly standing water but not *that* deep and no hidden dip or anything like that. I decided to take the same middle of the road line, which fitted with the camber as the most likely shallow point, and proceeded through slowly (potentially not as slowly as I should have done in retrospect) but keeping the revs up.

 

Halfway through water started pouring in to the passenger footwell (it probably looked more dramatic to us than it was in reality) through the blower vent, you could hear the fan whining so I presume there was some water going through this system. I can only assume that water has managed to get to the cabin air intake point, but I'm struggling to find on google where this is on a Mk3 fabia. On my Passat it's at the bottom of the windscreen and would have been well clear of any water.

Secondly, assuming water has gone through this system what are the likely ramifications? Everything now seems to work fine as it did before, car drives normally and fans and A/C work as they should. Is there anything we should get looked at?

 

Obviously the passenger side foot mat was removed to dry before soaking in to the carpets.

Cheers all for any tips!

Just had the exact same thing happen in my 2015 fabia. I had a look underneath/behind where the glovebox is and there is some weird wool padding which is completely soaked through. Gonna put a dehumidifier pad in there to stop mildew forming and hope water didn't get into any electrical components 🤞

Wading with a normal car;

No deeper than the bottom of the hub cap or whatever the alloy wheel equivalent is.

(below the sills?)

Drive slowly keeping the *small bow wave* rolling in front of you.

 

I rounded a shallow bend onto a straight section of road (a familiar daily journey to work)

I was moving at around 30mph and found myself looking at a small lake, too late to brake

so I aimed for the crown of the road and changed down a gear to avoid water intake.

I aquaplaned across the water on the engine under panel the front wheels acting like rudders

until they gripped the road again, safe, dried the brakes out and carried on.

Seasons Greetings, Stay Safe.

* PS my manager bent the con rods on his diesel engine.

Edited 25 December, 20205 yr by gumdrop

@grandmastero

Welcome to the forum.

 

Hopefully you get all dried out OK.

 

Just a wee point.

Fords are marked on maps and flooded bits of the roads are not.

I have driven through several flooded roads since August in my EV totally problem free luckily, while watching cars follow me and not make it.

 

The other thing that can be rather dangerous is coming to a flooded road, stopping, assessing driving across and straddling where the white line is so the crest of the road and then driving on only for some muppet to come driving fast towards you when you are not yet out of the water yet or on your own side of the road.

 

 

For water to come through your hvac like that, you must have gone through some significant amount of water at some speed.  From experience driving in mud, it usually gets kicked up from the wheels, through the gap in the engine bay where the abs module is and then up through the scuttle pannel.  The hvac system is just under the scuttle pannel, so that will be where the water came in.  (see below image)

 

Best way to avoid this is to set your hvac to recirculate air which closes the flap over the fan.