My car flooded — what to do with the electronics in the first 48 hours

If your car got exposed to water — a flooded street, a storm, a surge — what you do in the first 48 hours can be the difference between a rescuable module and a lost one.

Why the car can "seem" fine

Water rarely destroys a component instantly. The real damage is the corrosion that starts the moment water touches connectors and boards — and that corrosion keeps advancing silently, even if the car starts and runs normally for a while.

What to do in the first 48 hours

• Don't start the car if water reached dashboard height or higher
• Disconnect the battery as soon as possible to stop active short circuits
• Don't wait for it to "dry out on its own" — corrosion advances even once the car is dry outside
• Get technical diagnostics before assuming total loss, or before assuming "nothing happened"

The time window matters

The sooner active corrosion gets cleaned at the microscopic level, the better the odds of rescuing the module instead of replacing it. Waiting weeks while the car "seems" fine is exactly what shrinks those odds.