[JCR]

Had a 944 about 12 years ago (don't ask why). Driving home from the gym, at night on a 2 lane road, raining fairly heavily. Traffic suddenly stopped. As I got to the bottleneck, I realized there was standing water over the road, looked about 7" deep. (some of you know where this is going). Everyone was making it through fine by going real slow. My turn (no choice really - there was no way around it) so I go through ... the car dies - crank it over... nothing. So, ankle deep in water, I push it into a parking lot about 20 yards down the road and walk home.

Next morning I get a ride back with a Pcar nut friend of mine. Our GENIUS diagnosis is - some electronics got wet and the overnight drying will take care of it. We open the hood, I crank it over. Starts immediately but is runing very rough - he says "give it some gas" to which I agreed. When I do... HOOO BOYYYY...BAAANG... REAL LOUD!!! I get out of the car, look under the hood to see a f*#king 1" hole in the engine block and oil SHOOTING out of it! Friend says "you may want to go to the dealer for that one".

The damn thing still ran though. When I did show up at the dealer, there was another 944 there with the same problem, happening on the same night!

Well, since then I learned 944s have a snorkel air intake low in front of the front wheel. There are no holes along the path to break a vacuum. Just sucked water all the way up into the combustion chamber and... well let's just say I had a little physics lesson that day. Water doesn't compress - it snapped the connecting rod with the additional revs, sending it through the engine block. Had I known this at the time, I could have removed the plugs and pumped the water out by cranking it over.

Anyway, a happy ending... my insurance covered the $7,000 engine replacement. If you have a 944. drill a small hole in the intake snorkel, it's all you need to prevent water sucking. (Who engineered this thing?)