Hydrolocked my engine this afternoon. It swallowed a fair bit of water after sliding into a ditch and was in the process of being turned off as it went in, not started back up until I pulled the plugs and cranked the water out (I would love to smack Ford's designers for setting up the pass side plugs in such a way that they need to be pulled via the wheel well). It cranked over smooth and fine with the plugs out, intake was drained out before hand. I reinstalled the plugs and tried to crank it over and but it only cranks for about half a second and stops, thats it.

Sounds to be electrical rather than mechanical to me since it turned over smoothly with the plugs out, but it got close to a foot of water in the cab but not enough to top the trans tunnel. ECM? Fuse panel? Any thoughts? Gotta call insurance since its technically an MVA but if its something simple enough then I'd rather not and fix it myself. Just seeing if anyone else around has experienced the same thing and can give me any heads up for what to look for. Cheers

 

Oh, and for the record I did check to make sure that it turned over by hand before lighting it up. Water was clean, no dirt or mud contamination and it was yanked out before the oil was tainted. Its getting a full flush in the morning but for now I'm just trying to figure out what got fried in the process. LR

 

Im no genius at all, but i dont see the spark plugs being in out out effecting the ECU, but to test if it was somthing to do with wiring, how about throwing the plugs in but not connecting the wires..

Just a idea..

 

Pull the plugs again. Any water still left in the intake manifold was pulled in to the cylinders after you reinstalled them the first time.

 

First off all..thats sucks. Were you off roading or was it an accident. either way glad you are doing alright.

 

Officially or unofficially? No comment at this moment!

It started to crank over fine this morning so I'm thinking that its more that I let the battery run low last night. Its sitting on the car deck with a battery charger on it and a heater in the cab drying it out, so I'll try it again this evening. Last night I was actually just trying to keep from dying of hypothermia and trying to keep my ***** out of the freezing cold water to think about pulling the plugs again but it turns over freely by hand and its not catching up like it would be if a rod were bent/broken. Hard to say with any engines that have been hydrolocked, they may last 100,000 miles or they may last 10 miles, who knows. At least mine conked out under 1500 rpm and being an auto it'll give easier than a 5 spd truck. I didn't try to force it at all so it might be ok, will know later on tonight though. LR

 

Well, got 'er fired up this afternoon after changing the oil (looked like chocolate milk - yuck) and it fired up fine and idles fine - no knocks, pings, or anything odd. After a while it started idling a little rougher and rougher, never stalling nor knocking, but if I rev the engine up to about 1500 rpm it misses and 2500 rpm it sounds like a rev limiter's kicking in.

I threw a scanner on the truck and it came up with codes P0304, 05, and 06 (clyinders 4-6 missing), plus P0300 (random miss). I haven't had a chance to take it for a drive yet so I don't know how bad it really is, but anyone have any suggestions as to what's going on? Its 10 pm now, and I gotta be up and outta here by 4 am for work with an hour drive in so I guess I'm going to find out in a real big hurry as to how bad I actually F'ed the truck up.. on a good note though, leaving a heater in the cab all weekend dried the interior out nicely. Plus, the tranny oil's nice and pink so it didn't get any water in it thankfully.

Its due for its 48k oil change in a few days, so I'm going to dump it off at the dealership and ***** that its missing and hope they don't notice the water line in the cab lol. Nice thing is that they're doing a tranny flush this service too on it. LR

 

Guess I should finish the story off, in case someone digs this up later with questions. The engine is absolutely fine, the SOHC 4.0Ls don't mind water too much assuming that you shut them down immediately and change the oil out fast. The rough idling/running issue turned out to be a cracked sparkplug (most likely due to the fact that my truck's toolkit 5/8" sparkplug socket doesn't have a rubber boot in it to protect the plug), warranty fixed it when they did the service a few days later.

Oh, and never underestimate the determination of the voltage in those coilpacks either.... even with heavy duty insulated leather gloves and heavy winter clothing on, that bastard bit me 2 or 3 times before I could let go. I was pulling wires to see if I could pin point which cylinder(s) were acting up, and that F'er jumped the inch out of the boot plus 2 - 3" to the block through my glove. I don't see why folks are so determined to upgrade the OEM coilpacks, they put out more than enough juice to run the truck properly - trust my hand on that fact. LR