2020 Defender
- Thread starter Roverlady
- Start date
Bow wave is a nice way to create a water table depression close to the air inlet - but there's not going to be a depression behind a radiator.
As I don’t have an owners manual for the RRC, checked the D1 owners manual. It has a section on Wading. The maximum advisable wading depth is 20 inches. Then there is a section that describes what to do if that depth is exceeded. One is make sure the engine air intake is clear of the water. Another is drive slowly into the water and accelerate to a speed which causes a bow wave to form; then maintain that speed. Also fix a plastic sheet in front of the radiator grill to prevent water from soaking the engine and mud from blocking the radiator. Then there is an additional section on what to do after Wading. Pretty cool actually.
If you scroll down pics on this site it would suggest you are wrong.
Driving in deep water - Drivingfast.net
Wading though deep water can be one of the most enjoyable and exciting aspects of off-road driving, however it can […]
drivingfast.net
I am reluctant to offer advice as to offroading here because most of the conversation involves rock crawling or some form of Overlanding out west. That said I've spent a lot of time in a CJ7 in places some found uncomfortable. Like the time we were almost washed out into the flooded Wabash River. In the day water caused more problems than just getting into the air intake or distributor. Getting into the difs was not uncommon. Cracking the insulator on the plugs was also a problem. Repacking the front wheel bearings was a monthly thing.
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Not entirely: before I even got to the pics, I've come across this:
- Disconnect or disable fans if necessary to prevent damage to the fan blades and reduce the amount of water thrown around inside the engine compartment.
Without the engine fan, it is almost okay to drive headlights-deep - of course the cab will be full of water, but...
Yeah IDK about the fan thing. I took the CJ into water that was well into the fan level and never had a problem with the fan throwing water onto the engine. Now, to be honest, I was in the driver's seat and not in the engine compartment, so the fan may have in fact thrown water onto the motor, it just never caused me a problem. That has been a long time ago but I would remember being swamped in waist-deep water. The biggest problem was front wheel bearings. I did also crack the insulators on my plugs a couple of times. And, after a long trip through some very deep floodwater, a friend had the rear diff fail on his FJ40. The fluid inside looked just like that muddy flood water as I remember.
14CUX. I don’t remember for sure but I probably had dielectric grease all over the cap and plug wires. I know I changed all that stuff, and I wouldn’t not try to seal it a little. My Jeep’s cap was siliconed to the distributor and breather raised up the firewall with the air intake and all that jazz.
My GEMS D1 had never, ever, in its 289 kmi, had a misfire until the reluctor ring fell off the flywheel. I never drove in water over the tire, though, but I was never concerned with splashing water over the engine.
Yeah I wonder what pm was doing instead of cleaning all that water out of his GEMS truck. Distributor trucks are not better at anything.
It completed that "old truck" experience for me, and the safety only inspection cert was nice.
I have never had any concerns about ignition components getting wet in my GEMS trucks. They just ran.
It’s a system people don’t really know a lot about cause it doesn’t need much if any help
