I have read a lot of post about hydro lock but neither one of them say what it is. Does it hurt the engine. I was looking to get intake system but scared from hydro lock.

 

sucking water into the cyl and trying to compress water instead of air/fuel.

very bad. bends and breaks shit.

won't happen unless you do like the dumbass videos where people drive through floods. you have to submerge the filter to suck up water.

 

Basically water getting into the engine. Water does not burn, oil does. So water in your engine = NO NO!

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrolock

 

It add's 50whp.

On a real note, yeah you have to submerge the entire filter to hydrolock the engine. People who has CAI's face the danger more than people running other intakes. People LOWERED with cai's face the danger more... haha

 

it can happen, i can tell you about it. hit a puddle going about 35-40mph that came up to about the bottom of the car. it was dark and very rainy. it stalled, i had it pulled out and had the engine flushed out. it went about 2 months or so and then a rod broke and went threw the block...and no more engine. so yeah, not good at all. it wasnt so much the depth as it was the combo of depth and speed. i could have gotten through it going 5mph, but at 40mph things were a bit different.

 

Air is compressable. Water is not. You suck a cylinder full of water, the piston tries to come up on the compression stroke and tries to compress the water. Something has to give and it's usually a connecting rod.

Think of the 11:1 compression ratio. The air/fuel is compressed 11 times smaller on the compression stroke. It tries to do this to the water too.

At a minimum you bend a rod which fatigues it and it will usually break shortly after. You'll usually notice misfires due to the lowered compression.

Off topic but if a Top Fuel dragster has a misfire it will hydrolock. Our cars have an air/fuel "mist". Top Fuel injects so much fuel every stroke that if the ignition misfires just once, on the next stroke it will hydrolock from the fuel.This is impossible on any normal car.

 

Good answer. I was going to post the same.

 

those who want better airflow but less water entry possibilty can remove the lower intake resonator box- still passes smog in Ca so will pass anywhere

The bottem of the air filter box becomes the new intake holes and draw from the inner fenderwell area--as seen in cai pics with bumper cover removed
There is a plastic tray at the bottem with drain slots for water there stock- now its advantage comes into use!

 

I didnt know that either so i learn something new today!