I told myself with this quad after spending nearly 8k on it that it would not get sub-marined like I have my other quads but I did it anyway and did it well. I was crossing the corner of a rock filled lake that I have crossed many times before but this time it went badly for me. About 2/3 of the way into it I hit a large rock with my right wheel and the quad tipped on me, I tried to bail-off and keep it upright but when I jumped off the left side the water was 5' deep and I couldn't stop it, so over it came into 4+ foot of water up-side-down. I have to tell you I felt a little sick at this time. We finally got it out and stood it on end and the water poured out of the exhost like a garden hose wide open for several seconds. After removing the air cleaner and giving an on-trail inspection I hit the start button, not intending to start it but just to check; just a ca-chunk the pistons were full of water and locked. We brought it back to camp and removed the plugs, drained the oil/water then put some high quality oil in the cylender heads through the plug holes. I hit the starter again and it was like old faithfull going off, the water shot out of the plug holes, by this time I'm really feeling sick. Once again I put some oil in the plug holes and turned it over a few more times, drained the oil again, cleaned the airbox and all filters.
Now was the moment of trouth I put the plugs back in, put new oil in and hit the starter; she fired up like nothing had ever happend. I ran it for a few minutes and shut it down, drained the oil again and put new in. I then fired it up and took it for a ride, to my relief everything work, all guages, engine braking, no spitting, sputtering, etc. She received much TLC when we got back home and I'm still apologyzing to it. I've read a few stories of things not working after doing this, but so far so good after about 40miles all is well. I just hope I've learned my lesson, we'll see.

 

Wow, Down Periscope [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

 

I've never worried too much about water out in the dunes. . . sure there are some puddles in Oregon and St. Anthony. . . I stay way clear of the ocean at Pismo. . .

YIKES.

Glad to hear she fired up for you.

 

Congratulations man. It sounds like it could have been alot worse for you. Have you bought any lottery tickets lately? Is that why you are the "bigwave"? [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

 

When you tip over the outty on the left side and its running your air box will fill with c/c oil asap.never try and restart witout cleaning the a/box and topping off the oil, for sure you will be low or empty on oil. I know this happened to me. 06 outty outlander max 800.

 

That's a rough one but at least you got the first submerging out of the way. Hopefully the manufacturers realize that people tend to do these sorts of things to ATVs on a regular basis and design them to take that sort of abuse without too much complaint. It does become more of a concern when we're talking about computers and EFI components. I pray that the Bombardier engineers thought of that.

When I bought my Honda fourtrax 300 4x4 back in 89 I left the dealership and less than an hour later I had sank my brand new ATV in a creek . Just one hazy red corner of the rear fender was visible under the murky surface of the water. Yanked it out with another machine, poured out the water out of the various holes, drained the carb bowl, and kicked her over and blew the water out of the guts and went on riding. Probably sank it a dozen more times running the creeks that day but never quite so bad as the first sinking.

Never had single problem with that machine by the way. Just changed the oil and regular maintenance stuff.

 

Yep, my number one concern was the electronic element; there's not much I can't deal with when it comes to simpel cdi, carbs, manual chokes etc.; but let's face it these new fuel injected computer controlled quads and bikes are a whole different game. Who knows by the time my kids are doing this to their quads they may pull out an all weather pocket pc, hook it up and let the machine tell them what to drain and where to look, they'll wonder how we ever got by.
All the same I didn't enjoy it and hope not to do it again soon, I do hope like Capt. Q said they took this type of thing into consideration and she can handle this once-in-a-while.
My old Honda ATC 350x did this type of thing every ride, but things were simpler then.

 

When I finished reading your post, I thought man, a good news story for a change!

btw, I leaned my quad over on the left side twice for about 20 minutes on the side total, and had about 1" of oil in the bottom near the intake. Also, quite a bit of oil on the cloth filter, just on the bottom couple of inches though.

 

This IS an amazing story...one that should encourage those of us that have wondered about a "total immersion". Wow...I wonder if a Polaris , Suzuki, Yamaha ot Honda would fare as well...not trying to stir the pot...just wonderin...

 

A little more to the story, when I say I sank it, I'm not talking five or ten seconds in the water it took us 15+ min to get it out, so it sat there in the water floating only by the boyancy of the stock tires, this was a total submersion.
Something else worth mentioning is how I drained the belt housing, I didn't. I've always intended to put a drain plug on this bike but have never got around to doing it. When we stood it up after getting it out of the water much of the water cam out the exhost side of the belt cooling duct work; the remainder came out after I started it back up for the first time. I just held the throttle at about 2500-3000 rpms and it just flushed the remainder of the water out of the belt housing exhost, no problem at all. Jumped back on it after doing this for a min or so and she'd pull the front end right off the ground, no slipping at all. Perhaps they thoght of this and set it up to work that way, who knows, it's not the type of thing a manufacturer wants to advertise. I know with my Kaw Prairie when she gets water in the belt housing it's a bear to get it all out without partially removing the cover.

Be safe