Novak Conversions Jeep Wrangler TJ engine mounts

TJ over it's head in water (still drove it home!)

Rickstar321

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Original poster
Joined
Mar 21, 2022
Messages
47
Location
NEA (Jonesboro)
Saturday, July 1st, 2023.
Apparently... I'm still learning a lot of things the way I always have... the hard way lol... I have no idea why I was in such a hurry... I should have got out and walked around... drove a little... repeat... but as you can see in the video (see link below) that's not what I did.

I just went to a breakfast Jeep Club meet up, was invited to Stephen's (other gentlemen in the vid) 100 acre property to wheel a little in their creek. He walks with a cane and it was very thick gravel, so when I saw him waking way down the creek I drove down to give him a lift. That's when you hear me say... "so how far can we go?"... I should have gotten more clarification about exactly which tree he was talking about because I went to the wrong one!

What you don't see in the video is after I made sure he was ok, I fished around to find my winch controller magnetically attached to the base of the drivers seat, shook the water out of it, said a quick prayer that it would still blue tooth to the Badlands Apex 12000 about 3ft under water... and to my surprise it did! I spooled out about 50-60 feet to a tree and then pulled the TJ up onto a small sandbar. I have a snorkel... but they are not made to sit and "soak" in water... In my head i could picture all the little places water was seeping in! Some Jeepers hate on the BL winch, but it more than did it's job that day. Meanwhile the other 8 Jeeps, still several hundred feet down the creek were scrambling to put together a recovery, when I heard someone say... "Hey! He's got it up out of the water!"

... So then it was a matter of pulling back up to where everyone else was (Thanks Charlie!!) as after multiple full length pulls (from both our winches) my battery started weakening.
We finally got it back to "dry land" and started checking the oil and pulling plugs (Thanks Jamie!!). It was having obvious electrical issues so we had to jump the starter to cycle the 4.0. It spat some water out (right in my face) and after about an hour of messing with it we finally came to the conclusion we weren't getting enough voltage to the coil packs. So we jumper cabled it for about 15 minutes... cycled the ignition key 4 times, and she roared to life!

I have a LOT of work to do but I did drive it an hour to my house! I broke my starter pin actuator (new one came in today) so once I get that working I'll start tearing down the dash, changing fluids etc.

Main lesson learned.... slow down... why the hurry... get out and check!!

I was also asked why I wasn't throwing a cussing fit... for me it's easy. If I'm getting mad about something like this I've done... it's time to stop Jeepin'. It's my toy, I'm here to have fun! Sure I caused myself a bunch of work... but... opportunity to upgrade some stuff!!! Clean, Fix... Go have fun!

Here is a link to the YOUTUBE video. "Jeep TJ gets in water over it's head" I'll post some of the clean up vids from my phone this weekend, a lot already done.

Overmyhead.JPG

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Oh man that is amazing.

That is a day you will never forget.

It says volumes about how tough these things are-and how crazy the owners are.
 
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My brother bought a salvage flood car once. Expect electrical issues at connections in the future. I'd grab a spare wiring harness and computer to have on hand. It's cheaper when you aren't needing them right now.

Unplug what you can (fuses, connections, etc) dry them out and clean them up.
 
My brother bought a salvage flood car once. Expect electrical issues at connections in the future. I'd grab a spare wiring harness and computer to have on hand. It's cheaper when you aren't needing them right now.

Unplug what you can (fuses, connections, etc) dry them out and clean them up.

Yup working on all that now
 
Glad you got lucky. In 2006 I wound up nosediving at night in some water way deeper than I thought it was. Seeing dry land 10 feet in front of me I thought I could floor it and get my headlights back out of the water before anything terrible happened.

Instead I pulled about a gallon of water into the block at 5k rpms and threw a rod through the block....

I don't play in the water anymore...
 
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Novak Conversions Jeep Wrangler TJ engine mounts