Thread: Help!!! I don't know what to do!!!

I live in Las Vegas and the other day we had some heavy rain and lots of flash floods in different areas. Unfortunately I got caught in one of them. I got to this intersection where the water level was over 2 feet deep easily. I panicked a bit and tried to drive to safety and completely forgot that my intake was inside my left wheel-well behind the front bumper and tons of water was sucked in through the intake. My car obviously stalled and I ended up calling the fire department to get me outta there because I ended up in the middle of the intersection. About 45 mins later the water level had gone down a bit and another nissan enthusiast driving a nice nissan altima helped me push my car to dry land. I took off the intake assembly, held the throttle plate open and about 2 gallons of water came out through the throttle body. A short crank is all my engine does when I turn the key to start it. Is there any hope?

You must remove the spark plugs before cranking the motor, but seems that you already cranked it. That is when disaster happens mainly.
Remove the plugs, give the car short cranks to see how much water comes out of the wells. You must dry out the most you can the cylinders before atempting to assemble and turn on the motor. Good luck, hope no rods are bent.

Going inside an engine is something I have never done before. The only maintenance I know is how to change the breaks, the oil, the alternator, the starter and that's pretty much it. Any step by step instructions that anyone could give me would really be appreciate it. Thanks.

Take out plug wires, then take out the spark plugs. After that have someone to give the engine short cranks and watch the water drops/spray that comes out from the spark plug holes. Repeat this action until water doesn´t come out. Then spray wd40 inside the spark plug holes and leave open to dry, if possible for a day with the hood open under the sun.
Confirm again with short cranks that no water is coming out. Put in the spark plugs, replace the wires and try turning the engine on.
If you hear knock on the block, then you have bent rods and you´ll have to open it up and replace them along with the rod bearings.

What about the intake manifold. Is there anything to be done there considering that's where all my water came from?

You can remove the throttle body and try to dry the interior with a stick and a cloth, unless you want to remove the complete manifold from the head, but doing that with the motor inside the car is a real pain.
Here we get a bunch of Tsuru taxis with the same exact problem in the rainy season. Drivers have learned that when the engine shuts off, they should never crank it and have it towed to our shop.

Very well, thanks for the steps. I'll get on it and try to get started tonight since it's cooler than during the day. By the way, I have been wanting to take my sentra to mexico to get minor details fixed. Do you know any places near the border of El Paso TX where I can go to? I would like to get some good custom interior and body work done since it is a bit cheaper over there. Please let me know if you know of any places. Once again, thanks a lot for the instructions, I appreciate all the information you gave me. I'll post again with results after I get done with it.

I wouldn´t recommend border towns for body work, they just charge too much, and more if they know you´re a "gringo". I used to live in a town called Tampico in Tamaulipas state until January this year, but moved down to Mexico City. If you can take your car down to Chihuahua city you could get better deals. There is guy on this forum that is from El Paso, his name is nnoriega, you might want to ask him. I can ask on my forum, there is a quite big crowd in Chihuahua.

Sentra's do not do well as boats...

Check for water in your oil, it could have seeped down passed the piston rings. Athough you may want to verify that the engine survived before doing an oil change. No sense if the engine is shot.