An unseen enemy, borne on the rising tide of the November nor'easter, killed a lot of cars in Hampton Roads.
Salt - good on potato chips, really bad on cars.
It kick-starts a "corrosion that never stops," said Jim Huber, a vice president at Checkered Flag, where more than half of the waterlogged cars towed in after the storm have been written off as totaled by insurance companies.
A run-of-the-mill washout is a bit more forgiving. With a few new parts, a car drowned by a rainwater flood stands a chance of recovery. The nor'easter, however, was loaded with brine.
Streets were turned into lakes by "mostly tidal flooding," said Larry Brown, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Wakefield.
Around here, that means plenty of salt seeped in. Even under normal conditions, the tang of the Atlantic Ocean permeates a long way inland. As far as 100 miles up from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, salinity levels are close to those found in the ocean.
"Even the James River's pretty salty until you get up to about Williamsburg," Brown said.
On the winds of the nor'easter, that salty water swelled to 4-1/2 feet above its normal high, spilling into neighborhoods and leaving its rusty fingerprints on a multitude of vehicles.
State Farm, the largest auto insurer in Virginia, has logged about 1,000 storm-related claims so far. Salt dealt the death blow in most of them.
"It just does so much more damage to electrical equipment," said State Farm's Jon Hannah.
With so many cars sentenced to the scrap heap, repair shops missed out on a potential bonanza of fix-it work.
"There's no business there for us," said Checkered Flag's Huber, "unless we're able to sell the customer a new car, and we are seeing a little bit of that."
Salt or no salt, Huber said, he cringes every time he sees a driver plowing through flooded streets. Water deep enough to leak into the cab can ruin vital computer parts stored beneath the seats. If it's deep enough to reach the grille, it can be sucked into a running engine and destroy it.
"When I see people barreling through, I just shake my head," he said. Cars don't generally come with "a submarine option."
The best way to go: Creep along - especially in salt-tinged water. Minimize the splash up into the car's vulnerable underbelly.
Better yet:
"Just don't do it," Huber said. "Don't even try. But everybody does. They always think, 'I've got to get to work,' or, 'I've got to get home,' and they don't want to walk the two miles to get there.
"In the end, they wind up walking home anyway."
Joanne Kimberlin, (757) 446-2338, joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Built an Empire on flood cars
Go back to the aftermath of the famous Ash Wednesday storm. The Charlie Faulk automotive empire was a big winner in the flood car sweepstakes. They bought flood cars from the insurance companies and "restored" them to sell for major profits.
BUYERS BEWARE
There are many more sellers out there looking for their big score. Don't become one of their chumps!
What's worse are the idiots in large SUV's that think
they can drive faster since they are in a truck. It's the TIRES not the ground clearance that makes you hydroplane. When you go faster than the tires can dispel water that's when you float. Then when you regain traction if you not facing the same direction you we're driving the SUV will flip easier than a car because of the higher center of gravity. Basically you are MORE LIKELY to be injured in a SUV than a car, exactly the opposite of what most of the public thinks.
Aside from the drivers
Aside from the drivers making like speed boats through flooded streets is the number of vehicles parked in places known to flood and letting the water cover them. It looks to me like it's almost intentional. Maybe the insurance companies should take a better look at the circumstances that caused the vehicle to flood. These flood payouts effect all our rates one way or another.
The state requires that any
The state requires that any car with $1000.00 or more damage from flooding be issued a new title that shows flood damage on it. The insurance companies are supposed to do this. But as we know that may not always get done. If you go to buy a ar that seems to be a really good price check it close.
check the manufacturing date
if manufactured before a flood, might be a good idea not to purchase it.
this is reference
to newer cars that is
Flood Cars
I worked at an auto repair shop that bought flood cars, fixed them and resold them, even if they run fine now it's later down the line that the electronic stuff starts to act up. In most states the title to the vehicle has to say flood but when it goes from state to state sometimes it gets lost in the shuffle. Buyer beware, if your used vehicle has new rugs and new seat material and it is used i would stay away from it. Nobody spends that much money to resell a car unless they got it for next to nothing.
Be on the lookout...
As the previous poster mentioned, water logged cars can show up anywhere to unsuspecting buyers (they could even be new ones!)...you have to be extremely careful or simply just buy new cars from areas NOT in Tidewater/Flatland where flooding is not a problem.
How can we be sure?
How can we, as the public, be sure that these cars or their parts do not make it into the consumer chain? Carfax might help, but the criminally minded can switch VINs etc. And parts bought from vendors or junk yards don't have a way to trace their linage. This situation is rif with ways to scam the public