1998 S90 Car flooded and now engine is stalling

[jrassi]

Hi all, I've had this car for 3 years and never had any major engine issues. Well, 2 weeks ago, this area was flooding pretty badly and I ran through some water crossing a street. (about 2 ft. deep and 5 ft. wide) Car made it through, but died shortly afterward. I let it rest a few minutes, and then got it to fire back up. Engine was sputtering, but was able to get it home. The next few days I started the car and revved the engine to try and get it to fire properly, but it was still sputtering, ie, try to keep idle at 3,000 and it would go up and down between 1500-3000 rpm. The car was close to empty, so I bought some gas treatment and filled the tank about halfway. My mechanic friend and I ran it up and down the street, but it would keep fluctuating the RPM's and would be nearly non responsive if you even tried to go a little harder on the accelerator.

Again, we felt it would dry out and enough running around would fix it, but here it is two weeks later, and it seems to be getting worse. Just test driving it around the block today I had to restart it twice. Both times I was just starting to accelerate from a standstill.

Any ideas what would be causing this?

[Ou2mame]

Have you checked the ecu for water damage? There's also the crank sensor down pretty low... I don't know how far up the water went in the engine bay but the distributor could have gotten wet too, though that should dry out but I would take it out and check. Also take the air filter out, maybe the maf got ruined from the water.

[JimBee]

Erratic engine speed could suggest a sensor in the ignition circuits. It could be water in the ECT sensor union (plug). Water could have splashed all around the engine bay to the highest point, so you might need to just pull all your loom plugs, make sure they're clean and dry. If moisture has been sitting in one of those connectors for two weeks there could be corrosion building up which would account for worse engine operation.

Also, I agree that the MAF could have become fouled or got a little water in its plug. Have you looked in the filter box? You might have a puddle in there which could muck up the filter.

One other thing: I doubt it would be related to the water splashing, but feel around the flex air hose from air box to TB; make sure there are no holes in the thin plastic membrane covering the ribs. I've had that happen and it did cause erratic rpms and stalling, eventually it wouldn't stay running at all

And of course, you will want to get the codes read if you can get to a local auto parts store.

[BEJinFbk]

What do things look like inside of the distributor?