Started off quite well. Dee set off to watch a band in Manchester, I wrote some words and then had a pleasant couple of hours exploring some of the forgotten corners of Hafren forest with the dogs. Just as I walked back through the door, who should be on the phone but Dee requiring assistance.

She'd driven through a flooded section of road and oddly part way through the van had stopped. A kind soul dragged her back out and left her at the side of the road.

I arrived an hour later clutching tools and with a heavy heart started to pull the thing apart. As you can imagine, the motor was locked solid but I removed the glow-plugs in the hope I could remove the water and thus free it off. Sadly not, either the hydraulic lock that occured has snapped the cam belt and bent the valves, the lock itself has bent the valves or it's bent a rod and subsequently bent the valves or maybe even snapped the cam - deep joy.

I'm hoping the insurance company are going to play ball but we'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out.

Hope your Sunday was better than mine

I understood every word of that until "pull the thing apart. As you can imagine, the motor was"......

I had to go to a kids dancing party all afternoon


That’s a sub standard way to end a week Stu, fingers crossed you get it sorted

Had one in the workshop a couple of weeks back stu , took number 3 rod , amazingly didn’t touch the valves , cam or belt , put it all together and couldn’t bleed the rad rad for love nor money kept gassing up , took a while to realise but it had also destroyed the egr cooler so maybe worth sending that off to to be checked if your van has one. Looking on the positive side though stu at least you can put those rattle guns to work

Sorry to hear that Stu...

Firstly, disclaimer, I'm similar to JohnClimber in terms of understanding but...

Happened to me coming out of Chesterfield after some floods in 2017 I think. I hadn't realised but the shortcut I had taken was actually the same distance as the direct route to the motorway but bloomin satnav and 'engage brain etc etc' wasn't worming for me. Anyway, it was down in the valley or whatnot and around a bend... Seen another car parked up just before it but 'engage brain' didnt qyite work for me and once I was in I frantically hoped I'd make it through. The car was an LPG conversion by a shitty (its not a swear and he was very very shitty) so-called mechanic*

Anyway, I was still in the first year from the lpg conversion (from the shitty place who had reqyested that I went and topped up on lpg first time I went to collect post conversion so he could tune it... the shitty mechanic.. or did I already say that) and had just started making back my investment. Some kind souls with tractors (working on some building site up the road and maybe responsible for the poor drainage in first place ) pulled out the car and left me on the hill kindly...

As I waited for my younger sibling to come recovery me it suddenly started working again and I managed to get a good months more worth of driving out of her (estate Honda Accord Type S 2.4 L... made for economical folk apparently as I could never get any decent throttlw respinse out of her and thwse engines were the talk of the forum for being sluggish) before she/he/it/whatever broke down on motorway. Didnt quite break down but started making some massive clunking noises from engine bay and I managed to get to the next sliproad and stopped on side.

An hour and £100 or so later on urgent AA (or RAC or GF) membership I was happily being towed to my fav garage in Huddersfield. A few smirks later (he knows I only turn up at his when I've exhuasted my own cheapskate avenues) and he advised that it sounds like bent valves and best move it on. Sold on fleabay as Spares/repairs and exported to Romania or summat (DU05HXD was the reg I fodnly remember) for the handsome auction of £700ish...

Anyway, every .... has a silver lining. I've been thinking about starting a 'flood near you and its here' thread after having waded (I turned back... it was dark... did get as far as the submerged car before it reached my waiste.. hood call on taking the bike as it didn't suffer too much) to my waiste on Monday. I guess this will finally help me get it started

Erm... final thoughts.. I know you won't but, maybe it might be more efficient letting it go

*The flooding nor the broken car was probably not his fault but having seen so many broken 'LPG ' cars outside his place should've alerted me.. Besides, as soon as he'd done the job the EML came on and he never owned up!! Did I say he was sub standard(ty)...


NB. Thats what my 'waded flood' looked like in the light a few days later. Submerged car not to be seen which makes me think I obviously went in pretty deep before seeing sense

Sorry to hear that

Was it really deep or was the air intake quite low?

Hello Stu,

My lad did the same with his Clio - Insurance paid up okay, so hopefully you'll be right.

I did something very similar to my old van and the insurance company paid up no questions asked - I think they are pretty overwhelmed when there are big storms about and just want to sort simple claims asap. Fingers crossed!

Bum. Easily done though. Most important is no one hurt. Hope not too painful to sort.

I share your pain, hope it all gets sorted -on friday a woman drove out a junction and ploughed into side of our car containing my wife and kids, fortunately everyone was ok but our car is expected to be written off. Other driver admitted full liability and their insurance coughed up for a courtesy car within 2 hours. Dreading going shopping for a new car again, only got this one last June and that was a traumatic enough experience.

Have a search for a replacement engine from a breakers Stu, poss work out cheaper than a loss of no claims (unless protected!)..

Sub standard indeed, hope its not too costly

Happy to report that following Dee's efforts to transform the van into a submarine, the insurance are 'dealing with it'. Appears to be borderline as to whether it'll be repaired or written off, so we'll wait and see.

Strangely (or not) we went to empty the thing last night and cars were still going through and still breaking down in the middle. That lone 50 yards of road must have cost the insurance industry about 100k by now.

I've seen several folk near me plowing through flood water recently, hope they haven't lived to regret that aswell.

My weekend also went awol with mechanic gremlins.. Had a jcb spewing red diesel everywhere while coming back through Henley, not the best scenario on a Sunday. Semi dismantled now yet still waiting for parts.. Its frightening how much you come to rely on these/any machines

There's a road in Stafford that dips down over a brook which is guaranteed to have a few inches of water on it if it rains heavily and has been up to 3 feet under water recently. The petrol station that sits by the dip is permanently closed now since it's flooded out during every major storm this season so far and there's a row of houses that can't get household insurance they flood so often. Of course the council have no plans to fix the situation since it'll cost a couple of million. The police always put up road closed signs 100 yards or so up the road but so many people ignore it that the local towing company just park up a bit down the road to charge a pretty penny to get cars out. The really stupid thing is that there's a residential road that's parallel and never floods that people could use to get round.