TCM under water....

[kruat]

So in the last week in thr PacNW, and records amount of rain. My wife hasnt driven the RS all week, and it sits outside, backed in a sloped driveway...im sure you see what I'm getting at.

Well yesterday she wants to go out and run some errands, gets in the car, starts it, then notices all the lights lit on the dash. CEL, traction control, ABS, brake, low oil pressure even. Dash lights we're dimming as well. She turns the car off, then notices water on the passenger floor.

Fast fwd to when i get home, and i find about 4-6 inches of water under the passenger side carpet, and the tcm is completely under water. I grab my wet/dry vac and start sucking all the water out. Take the cover off the tcm, and it full of water as well.

So at this point, im thinking im screwed. Ive got the tcm is a big bowl of rice, and the car in the garage drying out. Im still not sure where it all came from, the engine cowl was dry, so im guessing sunroof drains, but she did mention that she thought the passenger door wasn't completely shut, but shes not sure.

I haven't scanned it yet, as I pulled the battery once I moved it into the garage, oh ya, it drove into the garage as well, but didn't want to shift out of park very easy. Im thinking ill need a new/used tcm at the least. So if anyone has one they want to get rid of, im in the market..haha

Cliff notes: heavy rain, flooded floorboard, soaked tcm, I need another tcm please.

[hahnmgh63]

I got one off Ebay and it appeared to have a touch of corrosion on the outside, lent it to a member here to borrow and it was dead so they definitely don't like water. The cowl drains are known to plug and there was a recall on those but if they were dry then your probably looking in the right place. Safe mode on the ZF 5HP is to stick in 3rd gear so if all was correct that is the only gear it will be in drive and will just slip with the TC to get you going.

[lswing]

Look to the guy who's parting with MTM chipped TCU, get the TCU from who's buying from him. Thread with chopped blue Allroad...

[kruat]

I posted in that thread, is someone buying the mtm chipped one? I thought the op didnt post back yet.

[lswing]

You can try Shokan Monday morning, around $500 when I bought one a few years back.

[P1054]

I'll have one for sale soon too, just getting started with a 6mt swap. Not sure how quickly I'll have it out tho.. It's MTM as well.

[kruat]

I'll have one for sale soon too, just getting started with a 6mt swap. Not sure how quickly I'll have it out tho.. It's MTM as well.

Your up in Yacolt, thats just up the road from me, PM sent!

[ben916]

On a side note, I have the new plastic piece/part between the windshield and the body. Mine started to leak also in heavy rain due to the piece being ever so slightly warped due to sun damage.
PM me if interested and I will get a photo so you understand the part I am referring to...

[kruat]

On a side note, I have the new plastic piece/part between the windshield and the body. Mine started to leak also in heavy rain due to the piece being ever so slightly warped due to sun damage.
PM me if interested and I will get a photo so you understand the part I am referring to...

Pm sent, I'm not sure what piece your talking about...

[kruat]

Got my beast back on the road. Looks like only damage was to the TCU, which BTW, thanks to P1054 for the MTM chipped TCU. Feels great driving her again.

[ben916]

Got my beast back on the road. Looks like only damage was to the TCU, which BTW, thanks to P1054 for the MTM chipped TCU. Feels great driving her again.

And I forgot to get a photo... I will tonight!

[lswing]

^^^Gratuitous car pics should be mandatory for any questions and answers posted...especially if the problem is solved...let the guilt set in...

[P1054]

^^^ glad I could help, and that the TCU solved the problem! Also awesome to meet another RS6 owner literally a couple of miles from where mine is getting the swap done..

[Zorb]

I really wish people would forget the rice thing. It is one of the least effective things you can do to deal with water. It's dumb with your phone, and dumber on an expensive car computer module.

[kruat]

I really wish people would forget the rice thing. It is one of the least effective things you can do to deal with water. It's dumb with your phone, and dumber on an expensive car computer module.

Well from personal experience, it possibly saved a phone I dropped in a bucket of soapy water...so I thought it was worth a shot.

Care to elaborate your statement?

[Zorb]

Basically, rice IS a good way to absorb water. At the same time, it can't magically pull water out of a piece of machinery. In a tightly sealed container, it may very slightly reduce the ambient humidity and lead to evaporation of some of the water. Please remember that some of the time, perhaps almost half of the time, a device dropped into relatively clean water with no corrosive cleaners in it, will survive by just being removed from power and allowed to dry for a few days. Of course it's a big risk because serious corrosion can happen in that time. BGA chips are a huge headache because their connections are not very accessible.

Invariably, temperature, moving air (compressor/vacuum), and/or sustained negative air pressure can be a lot more useful. A technique I often have used with phones has been to use an oven. Set your oven to about 200 degrees and put a thermometer in it. Turn it off at 200 and watch for the temp to fall to 185. Do NOT trust the oven's build in thermometer, I do not care if you have some stupidly expensive ultra premium top of the line oven that you wasted $3000 on, its thermometer is junk and less accurate than a $10 basic oven thermometer. Put the phone in the oven and on top of a piece of cardboard, without the battery if possible. Do not turn the oven back on. Wait for it to cool and then clean any components that still need it. I use a specialized purpose built device to do this which combines temperature/air current/humidity controls, but you can approximate it with a totally dry kitchen oven.

People love to cling to simple sounding fixes. They do not really care why something might work, if it does at all. They just care that some friend of a friend allegedly put a phone in rice after dropping it in the mop bucket and it somehow survived.

Suppose:
- Your phone falls in the sink.
- You put your waterlogged phone on your dining room table.
- You place a wooden cooking spoon on top of the phone.
- The next day, the phone starts working again.

In this example, the only thing out of the ordinary is to put the spoon on top of the device. One who is prone to simple reasoning might conclude that the spoon has somehow restored the phone. Of course this is not the case.

As someone in the electronics business, I have many times felt like I might as well have been banging my head against the wall with people giving the equivalent of old wives' tales the same level of regard as serious and competent technical advice. In the phone situation, I have many times had a panicked phone call from a person who had gotten their phone into water, but instead of bringing the device to me immediately, wanted to "give it a couple of days in a bowl of rice". I can almost always (over 90% success rate), very inexpensively ($<100), quickly (<1Hr), repair a submerged phone that is brought to me immediately. Give it 24+ hours, with or without rice, that drops to about 60%. Give it two or three days, it isn't even worth my time to try anymore.

Basically, the faster you can get water out, the better off you will be. Use an air compressor and/or a vacuum at any ingress/egress points for water. If you have access to the proper supplies, a water displacing or absorbing non conductive chemical can solve some problems in seconds. Water doesn't harm electronics, but the corrosion it induces does. The effect of the water itself is only temporary. Water causes capacitive effects and minor shorting (minor because it's actually a fairly bad conductor). If you ever find your flash drive in the bottom of the washing machine, throw it in the dryer (with the rest of the clothes) and it will be fine at the end of the drying cycle.

So everyone knows, one of my primary businesses is a data recovery company. We deal with flash based devices (USB drives and some kinds of memory cards), hard disk drives with electronic (circuit board) or physical (media/head) damage, magnetic tape systems, damaged mobile devices (phone/pda), and some other technologies. Most guys like me who own smaller businesses are actually pretty nice about helping people out, very much unlike the large services like Ontrack or Drive Savers that will charge you $1000+ for some relatively simple things.