Quote:
Originally Posted by MINI HLK
This worries me alot. My Car is a daily driver and it rains alot here. If this is the case I may need to return my intake. Unless there is a solution. Maybe like Injen has done, fabric use some 3m water repelant spray? Place the fabric on top of filter. I could easly hydrolock this car.  |
So I drove today through what was essentially a torrential downpour. Cars were pulled over because of lack of visibility, I hydroplaned a couple of times on the Capitol Beltway there was so much water. I got to my destination after about 30 minutes of driving and popped the hood.
There were about 20 droplets of water in the upper housing of the intake - about 6-8 on the raised plastic area around the filter. The front portions of the seal were very wet where it makes contact with the OEM gasket that seals with the hood. The radiator shroud in front of that gasket was soaked.
Although there was some water, the conditions I drove through were rather extreme. Twenty drops of water is not going to hydrolock your engine, even if it all went directly into the throttle body. The filter is absorbent; however, so it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that liquid of any form made it through the filter - 20 drops of water would merely be soaked up by the filter and would dry out quickly.
Bottom line - I don't think hydrolocking is a concern with this intake unless you literally flood the area with water - and if that happens you're pretty much hosed anyway.
For those concerned, I wonder if you could take a water repellent material and wrap it around the filter. The downside to this is that you would inherently decrease the amount of airflow through the filter which would in turn hurt performance. I honestly don't think it's an issue though.
By the time I would have been able to take a picture, it had all dried out - so my apologies for not being able to illustrate with anything other than words.