why can combustion cars stop working after driving through flood waters but be okay in heavy rainfall?

Question

I’ve recently seen on tiktok lots of footage of nice cars driving through flood water, usually they accelerate into it and there’s a surge of water back onto the bonnet but at first thought this seems like the same thing that happens when it rains

In: 0

Answer 1

Deep water floods the air intake. Water then gets sucked into the engine intake, and into the cylinders. Once in the cylinder it causes hydro lock because the pistons can’t compress the water that has entered. This basically destroys the engine