If I spend enough time on TikTok or Instagram, I’ll eventually get to one of those videos from the United Kingdom that shows people attempting to cross a flooded piece of road in their very normal, unequipped vehicles, only for their engines to suck in water and hydrolock, causing thousands in damage.
The tragedy of hydrolocking occurs because, unlike air, water can’t be compressed as easily by a combustion engine. The result, usually, is bent or snapped connecting rods within seconds of water entering the cylinder. Most of the time, that means complete and utter internal destruction, with an engine rebuild or replacement engine required.
If you’re lucky enough to have never witnessed a vehicle experience a hydrolocking incident, let me change that right now. The Bengregers YouTube channel is among the most popular of those documenting U.K. drivers’ bravery, leading to clip upon clip of hydrolocking sadness:
There are two ways to avoid hydrolocking your engine: The first, and most obvious, is simply not to drive in water. All of these drivers didn’t make it to their destination because they submerged their engine’s air intake—where the engine sucks in the air it needs to run—in water. With no air available, the engines aspirated H2O, leading to their demise.
The second, and only slightly less obvious, is to make sure your vehicle’s intake is above the water line. This can be done by having a vehicle that’s tall enough to ford the water without submerging the stock airbox (like a tall SUV or pickup truck) or by having a “snorkel,” a sealed piece of piping that extends from the intake to the upper part of the car—usually along the A pillar—that allows the engine to breathe air at a higher point. You’ll see this as an aftermarket upgrade on a lot of off-roaders, though some manufacturers offer it as an optional add-on. You can even spot one on this Toyota Land Cruiser in the above video:
This brings us to this video I saw on the r/Subaru Subreddit. It shows what appears to be an entirely unmodified last-generation Subaru Outback fording a particularly deep (for an Outback) section of water in a grassy field.
What scares me most about this video isn’t the depth of the water—the Outback should actually have no problem fording water that deep, thanks to the location of its intake (more on that in a second). It’s the initial approach that frightens me.
The Outback comes in at a severe angle, dipping its entire nose, about halfway up the hood, into the water. The Ouback breathes through its front bumper, which means for about a second, the engine only has whatever air is trapped underwater with it to breathe, before the nose eventually comes back to the surface.
As the U.K. highlight reel above shows, it only takes a second or two of an intake being submerged for hydrolocking to occur. You also risk water intrusion into places like your transmission or differentials. Luckily for this driver, the Outback managed to drive away under its own power (until at least the end of the clip, anyway). I’ve reached out to the original publisher on Reddit to get more details, like why they’d risk something like this in the first place, and if the car truly survived unscathed.
Dipping your car’s nose into water like this won’t immediately kill the engine, obviously—if I had to guess, the engine was able to breathe in the trapped air from inside the bumper area for the split second it was under water, buying it enough time to get back to the atmosphere. My advice for anyone looking to try something like this: Just don’t! Your car might be fine, and it might look cool, but there’s an equal chance you could cause thousands in damage and strand yourself in a body of water.
Top graphic images: Subaru; DepositPhotos.com
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