legacycentral bbs

Long story short, my car understeered a corner again, this time diving head-first into a snowbank before pulling itself right back out. I stopped to see if there was any damage, found none, but saw a lot of steam coming out of the engine.

Popping her open, it was because snow had gotten all over the engine compartment and was vaporizing. Not too bad. But snow is now packed in the fender slot and over the grate near the front turn signals...

So, is this particularly bad? If the snow melts in there, will it affect anything? I know it's the intake... that's why I'm asking. I don't want it to hydrolock or anything.

It won't hydrolock. It needs to be nearly submerged under water to do that.

Water gets sprayed all over the engine bay when driving in the rain down the highway. It should be fine. Just make sure no electrical connections are packed with snow.

And it sounds like you need to work on your driving lines. You need to scrub all speed before you get to the corner. Never try to drop speed IN the corner or right as you enter. If you keep understeering, you just need to slow down - plain and simple.

In this case, it was that I hit the brake pedal instead of the gas as I was coming out of the turn, so it slid right into the snowbank. But in short, you're absolutely right.

The only time you need to worry about the intake in that situation is if you have a NACA duct like me. In that case it just gets jammed with snow and makes the car hesitate like a bastard.

Steve

I'm guessing you mean those side vent things... no, don't have those, my car's pretty much bone stock, definitely bone stock when it comes to intake. I need the temperature here to go back to 50s so I can start modifying it seriously.