SerasLibre

Earlier this month on my way home from work a deluge turned my drive home into a drive through a flooded highway.

I would like to share a few tips that I learned over the past few months;

1. First of all - avoid driving through anything that touches the bottom of your car if at all possible. If there is no choice (I was caught in a deluge of rain and the roads I was driving on flooded within minutes), do the following;
2. Drive as fast as you can without creating a bow wave/wake/etc. You want to minimize your time in the puddle/river/stream/etc., but you also don't want the water level at the front of your car to be higher than anywhere else. Note that this typically means <5mph. If you are going faster you are doing it wrong.
3. After you get home remove all floor mats from your car and make sure that the carpeting is dry. If not, allow your car to air out. My passenger side went through the deepest water, and as such the front and rear floors were wet.
4. If you drove through deep enough water, your flywheel will splash water up and into your starter. Your starter will get wet. Have you ever changed a starter on an LS? Most haven't becuase they aren't supposed to break - becuase they are the most annoying part on the car to change. Find a way to get the engine hot - for a long time. My starter failed one week after I drove through deep water. My commute is 25 miles each way. Get that engine temp up as high as you can as soon and often as you can. I"m not sure what is the best way to do this but it would have saved me from buying a new starter. the high temps should cause the water in the starter to evaporate and hopefully dry it out.
5. If you have to change your starter anyway, be warned you will hate it and curse EVERY. STEP. OF. THE. WAY.

Feel free to add your own tips below - hopefully not from first-hand experience! Note that I estimate I drove through areas with at least 12" of water. Every white BMW was stranded during this downpour. No other cars were disabled.

Johnhav430

What were the issues with BMWs, and why white??

There's a part of my commute that gets flooded, I try to avoid it during storms, not sure in inches how high the water gets, but I'm amazed when some don't even attempt to avoid it (we're traveling SE, so the opposite side of the road is dry--if I'm caught, sorry, the NW traffic just has to wait, because effectively there is barely 1 lane)...

SerasLibre

It was probably just coincidence that a white BMW was stranded at every deep water crossing, among other german marques. Something must be different on the german sedans that makes water intrusion into the engine a greater risk. May be related to them being closer to the ground/lower?