93 chevy underwater for 30 minutes weird sound

[FlatBlackBurb]

truck: 1993 z71 completely stock (except for mud tires and exhaust)

im pretty drunk right now not gonna lie sorry to anyone who this doesnt make sense to. okay so my buddy decided to wheel his truck tonight and got stuck in a deep rut. he didnt have a tow strap thought he did so i had to drive all the way back to my house (30 minutes) to get mine. when i got back (mind you the floorboards inside his truck are completely underwater now) his truck wouldnt start. i yanked the crap out of it with my 06 and finally got him out. he finally started his truck and it sounded like a steam train. i can't really explain it bu it didnt sound like a gas motor. I can't really seem to place what's wrong with his truck i'm thinking spark plugs since most of the exhaust was underwater and some water might have gotten into the cylinders.

all i know is i love my '06. and i'mr eally sorry to anyne who has to read this and is like ok this guy is wasted. but he's counting on me to fix it tomorrow and i just wnt to know what you guys think. mch love to ck5!

also he was able to drive home very slowly. his truck is running insanely bad. i pulled the air flter and looked in the TBI and everythng looks clean. his truck top speeds at 15mph

 

[Jason4x4]

sounds like he bent a rod

 

[GsxrMike]

I would check the ignition first. Plugs, wires, cap, coil, rotor and make sure they are all clean and dry. Crap in the cap can really make a truck run bad.

 

[mattman4x4]

he finally started his truck and it sounded like a steam train. i can't really explain it bu it didnt sound like a gas motor. I can't really seem to place what's wrong with his truck i'm thinking spark plugs since most of the exhaust was underwater and some water might have gotten into the cylinders.

Hi Guys,

My hubby read this post to me and I just had to respond. I know EXACTLY what that sound is. It sounds like a diesel engine. Here's how I know.

When I was 19, I had a V8 Dodge Dakota. Where I lived, there was a road that actually went through a (usually shallow) river. As in no pavement, you just drove carefully across. It was a favorite spot for my group of friends to hang out in the summer. We'd park on the shallow beach on either side and we'd go swimming, hang out, etc. Well, a few days before this story takes place, we'd had torrential rains and flooding. While the water had mostly gone back to it's usual height, the sand at the bottom of the river was loose which I didn't take into account.

One of my friends who had hitched a ride to the river with another friend needed to leave to go to work. My truck was one of the few not blocked in so I offered to run him home. As I got to the center of the river, I felt my tires lose their grip and start to sink down in the loose sand so I gunned it. I broke loose, but ended up pushing more water in front of me than usual as I approached the bank on the other side. Did you know that a Dakota's air intake is in the grille? I didn't. So as the water came back down off the bank in front of me, I flooded my engine and the truck died halfway up the bank.

One of the guys towed me up out of the water, but my truck just wouldn't start. So several of the resident pseudo-mechanics started "helping". In hindsight, it would have been smart to just have it towed to a real mechanic, though I think the first thing we did probably didn't hurt (took out the spark plugs and turned the motor repeatedly to get most of the water sitting on top of the oil out). Then along comes a guy I don't know who has a brilliant idea - let's pour a little alcohol in to "dry up" the water. Uh, yeah...bad idea.

When my truck finally started, it sounded normal for all of 3 seconds before a horrible crunch and then it sounded like a diesel. I cried. What's worse is that the truck was technically my father's truck AND dad's a mechanic. I called him on my cell phone on the way home and he was so pissed when I pulled up in front of his house that he couldn't even speak. It took him about 45 minutes to pull himself together enough to yell at me.

Ultimately, I ended up bending the #8 connecting rod which scored the #8 piston. I had to replace the short block to the tune of $4000 (this is in 1996). Here's the awesome part - my insurance covered it under an Act of God. I told them I purposely drove it through a river and they paid for most of the new engine.

Dad and his coworkers started calling my truck The Titanic because Dodges don't swim -- they sink.

Good luck!

 

[FlatBlackBurb]

Hey thanks for the input! Is there any way to know if he bent a rod rather than ripping the whole engine apart? His truck is over at my moms house now and we're going to change the spark plugs asap

 

[GsxrMike]

You could drop the oil pan and look up in there.

 

[FlatBlackBurb]

sounds like a plan. we'll do that and see what happens again thanks for your help everyone

 

[DEMON44]

if you didn't pull the plugs and purge the water before you restarted it I'm betting you bent rods. you might not physically see the bend in a rod from the bottom, unless its really bad. you'd have to measure them. you could pull the heads and measure quench distance with a sled guage dial indicator.

 

[pauly383]

i can't really explain it bu it didnt sound like a gas motor.

Did it sound like someone in the cylinder shaking a tin can full of pennies really fast ?

Thats what a 350 sitting in my yard sounded like when it had a bent rod , and water shooting down the exhaust pipe because of the crack in the cylinder wall .

I give GM this , the damn thing would still start and run though