how they affect your fourbie

Making your Fourbie a Watering Can

River crossings deserve your fullest attention and knowing where the exit is provides great peace of mind.

Where I live, there’s precious-few opportunities for getting stuck in the drink. In South Australia our rainfall isn’t extensive and it’s only on occasion when a big wet-weather event occurs, like the one that drenched the SA Outback in early February. You fine folk in Western Australia aren’t immune from the odd cyclone or winter dump either and the nett result of all this precipitation is a plot of land, bisected by creeks and rivers, suddenly running a banker. Some of our 4WD brethren reckon that those moments are the time to drag out the fourbie and go play, but I’m going to raise a conservative hand here and suggest that land travel might wait until things calm down. Fast flowing and deep riverine systems are a tragedy waiting to happen because 4WDs float, contrary to popular belief. On the calmer days though, water crossings are feasible. A bit of planning, a bit of skill and a bit of luck might see you through. The modern 4WD vehicle isn’t wellendowed to tackle anything deeper than axle-height paddles and that is despite vehicle manufacturers crowing on about 800mm fording ability. Whilst their air intakes might be bonnet height, there’s a lot of other stuff sitting lower that doesn’t like getting dunked.

At the lowest levels, your brake and axle assemblies will be likely submerged and Making your Fourbie a Watering Can PART 1 By David Wilson whilst brakes are designed to cop some immersion, sodden brake pads and shoes reduce the vehicle’s stopping ability and need time to dry out. No biggie. Axles however need protection. You all know the job of the differential is many-fold. Get the torque out to the wheels and turn them, allow wheels on one side of the car to speed up or slow down on a bend and ultimately provide a final drive ratio to determine how fast your vehicle will scoot down that road. The gears inside that housing whizz around in a bath of oil that keeps them lubricated and happy. As they spin, they get hot and pressure builds inside that vessel and has to be released to the outside world. Manufacturers promoting the 4WDworthiness of their vehicles knowingly fit breathers to their diffs, snorkelled up

An outback SA road cut by floodwaters after the February big dump and likely needed significant repair after the water subsided.

to a higher point to exclude moisture penetrating the housing and contaminating the contents. Others omit that all-important tube rising from the breather valve and the risk of contamination is now real. The effects of now emulsified gear oil, and left unchecked, are a crown wheel and pinion set corroded and doomed to fail and in likely a short amount of time. Postdunking checks aren’t usually that hard if armed with a socket set. Remove the filler bolt, stick a pinkie in there and check the colour of the oil. If grungy and milky it will need servicing. Next things to suffer are likely the sparks, and especially the alternator. Depending on where the alternator is housed will determine its susceptibility to immersion. Some makers site their alternators up high in the engine bay, others not-so. Low positions make them vulnerable to those days when the water is suspending a lot of debris. Crystal-clear streams usually won’t create any chaos, but add ever-increasing amounts of turbidity and ultimately mud and you can expect your electrics will go kaput. If you are unlucky enough to have your alternator cop a thorough drowning in muck, I’d suggest you respond quickly and pour litres of clean drinking water through it whilst the engine is running and turning it over. That might just flush out the grit from the brushes and the bearings. If it is screaming its head off and the battery light is aglow, you’ve likely caught it too late. Earthing points are next in the firing line along with those all-important ECUs. Because modern autos are so reliant on electronics, they have lots of electrical componentry; relays, fuse blocks, ECUs and earthing points. None of this stuff likes getting wet. Whilst plugs are usually well protected with O-rings providing a snug fit,

This is all that Toyota offer these days on new Hilux, a breather valve with supposedly a one-way action. If your want is to cross streams you best replace it.

Any low-lying area will be inundated after heavy rain and flash-flooding, like in the woodland in the Blue Mountains NSW, leaving deep ruts chock-a-block with soupy slop.

On the underside of the air filter box of most 4WDs you should find a 'duck-bill' grommet designed to drain the assembly if it floods. Periodic inspection is recommended.

left long enough, lingering moisture will do evil and start corrosion on earthing points and cause all sorts of weird reactions for the car. Usually random battery lights on the dash and unfathomable issues elsewhere, that’ll drain a wallet at your local dealer/ workshop faster than a day at the races. Radiator fans are also a source of looming disaster. I remember thirty years ago being at the Flinders Ranges and a sudden late-Spring storm dropped 30mm and turned an earlier-in-the-day, dry and dusty creek-bed, into a now wheel-height stream and despite the crossing being a shortish twenty or so metres, it was enough to rough-up my Rodeo’s radiator. As water rushed over the bumper and through the grille, entering the engine bay with a bit of gusto, the spinning fan blades flexed forward and clipped the inner face of the radiator core leaving a circle of crushed fins and crushed cooling tubes. That was a throwaway. I mentioned earlier the risk of turbid water, the gluier it gets with silts and mud, the more it sticks to stuff. That poor old radiator makes an excellent trap for sediment to

Sometimes exits can be way down the end of a creek and the prospects of a duck-dive in a deeper section are real.

My D-MAX’s radiator was chock-a-block full of silt after a few plunges through a turbid system of creeks and the reason for some early-summer overheating.

find its way into the nooks and crannies between the cooling fins, reducing air flow through an engine-critical component, that on a hot day might create an overheating issue and cost you a motor. Speaking of costing a motor, don’t believe the worth of snorkels. There’s been a bit of an arms race of late between manufacturers claiming who has the deepest fording capability. Isuzu and Ford have been letting the world know that their 800mm claims make them the best and that their intakes are baffled to exclude moisture from entering their airboxes and will save a motor from a hydraulicallyinduced big-bang! Maybe. You, the consumer, and believing this to be true, thinks how can I enhance that protection? With a snorkel of course! There’s a whole heap of bunkum attributed to snorkels, elevating the air intake for less dust or water entry, cooler air temperatures and greater fuel efficiencies, the ram-air effect and more power … it’s the stuff of snake-oil salesmen. When a modern 4WD is becoming buoyant at barely 750mm depth and you are now bobbing downstream, what’s the point of a raised air intake when what you really need is a paddle? After the water has percolated up through the nooks and

Luckily for the owner of this Isuzu D-MAX, both his front and rear axles have factory-fitted diffbreathers, snorkelled up to a higher location. ARB stock a Diff Breather Kit that’ll snorkel your differentials to a higher point under the bonnet.

ARB also stock bras for cars, a Creek Crossing Cover stretches over the front of the grille and excludes moisture from the engine bay.

crannies in the vehicle’s floor and through the service points in the doors and filled the floor around your feet, you’ll know the true meaning of a watering can. Open those doors and watch a torrent of water tip over the door sills. If you were lucky enough to survive that event, be prepared to do some remedial work, because all of the vehicle’s interior below the high tide mark will need to be stripped out and hung to dry. If you haven’t worked it out already, I’m not a big fan of taking a 4WD for a swim, but if you must, and now knowing the risks, next time, we will investigate some technique that might save the day and remove some angst from a future journey.

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