Video Of The Week: Getting Water Out Of A Flooded Jeep Wrangler

Comments (Archived):

1. Nice trick, any downside of keeping the plugs off all the time to prevent the water from settling in the first place? Unless of course you are cruising thru a deep puddle) Jeeps are cool, my dad has always dreamed of owning a Jeep. I send him about 20 photos a month of random cool Jeeps I see in Brooklyn and midtown. :)Also, at first I thought you had posted the wrong video because your voice sounded like someone else.

2. Wrangler?! Don’t worry, I’m sure things will pick up for you Fred, with some financial discipline and another IPO or two, the Cherokee is in reach!

3. Any fish?

4. YEP! I had an ’87 Wrangler during college days in upstate New York, we drove along Lake Ontario when it was so turbulent that huge water waves went surging over the road. We were instantly flooded (besides me almost getting knocked out of the vehicle). My friend knew exactly what to do, and out the plugs went. Instant recovery.I think Jeeps, with military heritage, have had this functionality since early times. The original “CJ’s” (Civilian Jeep) went so far as to have a vertically flat dashboard, built for direct water including being power-hosed down.

   1. Hi Ken!!!!

5. Nice! I had a ’94 Wrangler i6 (4.0) loved it…..when this happened to me (did at least twice) I took the time to take everything out of the jeep and do a detail clean. Enjoy!

6. As a kid always dreamt of having a wrangler. No doors, no roof. Looked super macho and cool. Me driving, 3 bikini models in the back. California dreaming vibe. Happy days.Never got one .Did end up driving a jeep many many years later. Felt like driving a tank through quicksand and cornered like a freight ship .- never meet your heroes .

7. Most cars have floor plugs – even without a rooftop you can get a car flooded leaving windows down, as I have managed to do on two different occasions with two different cars. In another case something nasty got spilled on the floor of the car: I was able to douse the floor, wash it and drain it, and that was really the only way to get it cleaned.

8. https://www.google.com/imgr…

   1. You always said you ride a bike. 🙂

      1. i do. i got there by a process of elimination.

         1. … of wheels 🙂

            1. +2 degrees Celsius = +15ft of sea level. flying cars? floating cars.

            2. remember that the rock upon you live in, that allegedly arose out from the azure main, rises or sinks too.

   2. Sometimes I think those old-style cars like the ones in the background of the picture are better than the modern ones we have these days. (To look at, of course, not saying that they are better for performance, reliability or environmental reasons.) A bit like the gold-plated pocket watch (scroll down) in this post:A simple alarm clock in Python (command-line):https://jugad2.blogspot.com…That’s been one of the most highly-viewed [1] posts on my blog, over the years since I started it (now 10+ years ago), incidentally. Although the picture is cool and the tool I created is (at least a bit) cool, I have thought now and then about why it has had so many views (relative to my other posts), and my guess is that the main reason is because it is an example of a tool that fulfilled a genuine need, though a small one (see the post for why).[1] https://code.activestate.co…It’s the second-most viewed post in the link above (at the time of writing). The most highly viewed is the one (at same link) titled “Python text-to-speech with pyttsx”, which is again understandable, although I did not do much for that, just used a text-to-speech library, which ties in with what @LE says about human effects and so on, because text-to-speech is a human-interest topic, more than some dry algorithm.

      1. Also check out a second (musical) clock version I created later :Jal-Tarang, and a musical alarm clock in Python:https://jugad2.blogspot.com…Make sure to check out the music video of a Jal-Tarang performance linked in the above post.https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

9. Good luck with your Youtube channel, just subscribed. :)Considering your Twitter followship and the blog I think it would be easy for you to increase your audience there. Video is the future.

10. Everyone should own a Wrangler.

11. Harvest the inevitable mushrooms when they grow

12. I have one too and I leave the plugs out year round

13. I respect you even more now that I know you own a Jeep .

14. .From a guy who has flooded convertibles for half a century -1. Spray two coats of Rustoleum automotive clear paint (gloss or matte) on the seat pan to prevent rust. Dry it with a hair dryer first. Take out the seats and do the same thing at the attachment points.2. If you want to keep those carpets bake them in the sun for a week on both sides and spray the bottoms with Chlorox and water 1:1. Otherwise they disintegrate.3. Put rice in panty hose and jam it into any corners near wiring or instruments for a week. The rice will suck the moisture out. You have moisture behind the dash.4. Consider going commando – no carpet mats but Weathertech rubber mats.5. Blow off the plugs, just don’t drive through high water.Once it starts to rust, you can still do it, but it is not as effective.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    1. That’s (3.) a very good alibi for the panties lying around in the Big Red Car. :)I was about to suggest Lysol for the carpets.

       1. .There may be people who claim to have fathered children in the backseat of The Big Red Car. Further I cannot say.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    2. Wtf?Nobody should know this much about drying out a Jeep.

       1. .Five years of Army Jeeps, 1966 Impala Super Sport, 1966 GTO, Mercedes, 1972 TR6, Volvo, Mustang. Convertibles all.Sunk a couple of Jeeps. Wrecked the TR6 – almost took me with it. Almost lost an eye.Love affair with the wind in my hair.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    3. I think I got all but one of these stories beat. Drove a Jeep CJ 7 sans roof to HS in May of my senior year (in SK).Drove home in 4” of snow.Worse, snow melted on roads. So, sitting in snow while not driving in snow…..

       1. .Love driving with top down, windows up, heat blasting in winter.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          1. Yes! Mint on the pillow talk.In summer I do the same but have the AC running (not blasting). I am sure that will give people conniptions. (Noting there isn’t any environmental impact from what you are doing (heat from engine) vs. what I am doing. Luckily I don’t think or care about that type of thing..)What I love about this world though is people cherry picking out others bad behavior without considering their own bad (if you want to call it that) behavior in a host of other areas.Worst thing is when you pull into a service station after it’s rained and get leaked on by one of those roofs that covers the pumps.

       2. HS?SK?

          1. High School.Saskatchewan. ( Prince Albert to be exact )It was a nice morning, but ….

    4. Panty hose? I DON’T wear panty hose; never did; not even once; never will; not even once.BUT it appears that I could use a pair of panty hose!!!! I.e., I have the computer I plugged together essentially okay for the hardware and nearly okay for the software (need to install SQL Server).But the computer has several fans, each 120 mm in diameter. Mostly they suck in air. Well, I’d VERY much like to have some air filters for those fans. Otherwise after some months, I can expect quite a lot of dust on some delicate parts, e.g., the very fine wires on the motherboard.There are claims that an excellent air filter is panty hose cloth. So, get a patch; get or fabricate a simple steel frame; magnetize the frame; spread panty hose cloth over the frame and glue it into position, maybe with some 3M spray glue I have; trim the cloth to size; using the magnetic property, place the resulting filter to cover the intake fans from the outside. Monthly or so, check the filters for dirt. If see some dirt, then rinse or vacuum off the cloth; let it dry; and apply it again.I will NOT buy panty hose!!!But today at a fabric store, I asked if they could sell me a yard of panty hose fabric or something similarly useful as an air filter — they claimed they had nothing.Maybe I’ll have to relent and buy a pair; maybe I should get queen size?Then for the steel frames — hmm …. Coat hanger wire would be good. Use some solder or epoxy to close the circle or square. Hmm ….Any more related ideas?

       1. .Instead of a wire frame, I’d use chicken wire with about a half inch grid. This will also support the panty hose material and not allow it to get sucked in.Cut the right size chicken wire and put a folded cardboard frame on the inside and outside about half an inch wide. Fold a piece of light cardboard and slip it around the chicken wire at the edge half an inch deep on all four sides.Glue your panty hose material to this and let it fit by friction.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          1. WOW! Thanks! Nice ideas! Kept with my collection of candidate items for filtering!

15. Who can forget Risky Business (Tom Cruise) when his Dad’s Porsche 928 went into the lake.”Whose the Uboat Commander”https://youtu.be/bodVVtqmbZ…

16. Line the floor with Apple iPhones. They do a hack of a job at absorbing water.

17. Is it a manual transmission? I’d so, I have a renewed respect for you.

18. I was texting with my friend Kirk and he told me that the Jeep has plugs to get the water out of the car. So when I got home I googled …..This is probably an example of why it would be a good idea to let machines listen to you.When you told Kirk it probably wasn’t with the expectation of finding a solution. It was just a story you were texting or telling him. Then he offered the solution (or pointed to one) and the rest is today’s history. Maybe you would have thought eventually to do a google search for a solution but you probably didn’t. Simply because it’s an unusual and one time event. Just like you wouldn’t google ‘flooded basement’ thinking there would be an easy way to drain the basement. You’d just call your insurance agent (maybe) and Service Master?But this also illustrates how the human brain works and why some people end up better off than others. Even with the exact same tools at their disposal. [1]Your video now comes up immediately in the first place when you do a google search (not a youtube search) for ‘jeep flooded’. And that is only with less than 200 views.One last point. This is a potential reason why Universal Basic Income will not work. At the core humans (and animals) like overcoming an obstacle and doing work I believe. Unless that work is really so shitty it’s a negative. No doubt (very important) you felt really good after you found the solution to the problem and fixed it. In other words my guess is you probably felt better than if it never happened in the first place. You got a slight bump what I call the ‘after the sickness bump’.[1] Google searches don’t replace actual experience. The google search is great if you know what you are looking for. But it does nothing to duplicate years of experience and interaction in real life. And it does nothing to allow you to take what you learned in one context and apply it somewhere else where the answer wouldn’t even appear in a google search. For example going forward you might, if your basement were flooded, think ‘hmm maybe there is a way to drain the basement I will look for plugs’. (You won’t find them but the point is the experience will allow you to think later in a completely unrelated situation and that could be super helpful)… https://uploads.disquscdn.c…

    1. UBI is a disincentive to work. That said there should be some mechanism to counter natural network effects that we see everywhere that balance the (geometric) value captured at the core with the more or less linear costs borne at the edge. I believe this can be mapped to any socio-economic or political system; real-estate disparity, universal healthcare, universal communications, etc…

19. My suggestion is WD-40 Water displacement 40th try. Sold by the gallon at Harbor Freight for $23 https://www.harborfreight.c….Edit after you get the water out to prevent rust.

20. This is some dope shit.I’m gonna go score myself a Wrangler to check it out.I’ll get back to ya.

21. CONTRIBUTORS:We assume Fred has the Jeep Wrangler for functionality.Is there an AVC contributor ordering the Karlmann King?http://www.karlmannking.com/Captain Obvious!#UNEQUIVOCALLYUNAPOLOGETICALLYINDEPENDENT

22. My 16 yo has a great story of a classmate politely asking out of class this June, and then everyone trying to watch as he frantically puts up the top on his Jeep.I repeat, my 16yo……

23. I suspect that some experts in such things will advise you that recovering from such water damage will require more than just draining the standing water. E.g., there can be mildew in the fabrics and corrosion in everything else. If the water was only 1-2″ deep, then that’s really good.

24. I always thought that was the de facto motto for Jeep…….”Just add water”!

25. It must have been so satisfying to pull that plug. I enjoyed watching it and it wasn’t even my car filled with a lake!