Hydrolock ???'s

I have a 95 cherokee country and a few days ago it threw a rod and put a hole in my oil pan. grrrrrrrr. I was told on the jeepforum.com page that i hydrolocked the engine, thus the rod went by-by.. Does hydrolocking happen when water gets in the intake, and into the engine?? Would getting a snorkle help prevent this??
So right now im looking for either a new motor, or a rebuilt one. Id love to stroke it (hehehehe stroke it, thats funny) but ive heard that it will run about $5k to do all the mods to it. I searched and i found a bunch of posts of rebuilt engines on here, so i should get one soon.

hydrolocking is when you suck water in through you intake and into your engine, and when your engine seizes up and will not crank

i got stuck in a pond and luckly, after i pulled the plugs, the water shot out and i drove home

and yes of course a snorkel, if water tight, will keep your engine from sucking water in

as far as what to do, theres another thread on here right now about that, if it was me i would go to the junkyard and get an engine for less than 500bucks and do all the seals, etc while out of the vehicle, then just swap them in

or you could have it rebuilt, a reman engine........ but those are all$$$$$$

wheres is that other post? i would like to look at it, thanks......

fisher446 said:

Id love to stroke it (hehehehe stroke it, thats funny) but ive heard that it will run about $5k to do all the mods to it.

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Maybe if you had someone else build it for you. You'd have to be trying pretty hard to spend that much on a stroker. A mild stroker can be built easily for around a grand.

It is often, but not always fatal if a part flies through the pan. I´d open it up and take a look. At the worst, you´ll get a little dirty and maybe learn something.

fisher446 said:

I have a 95 cherokee country and a few days ago it threw a rod and put a hole in my oil pan. grrrrrrrr. I was told on the jeepforum.com page that i hydrolocked the engine, thus the rod went by-by.. Does hydrolocking happen when water gets in the intake, and into the engine?? Would getting a snorkle help prevent this??
So right now im looking for either a new motor, or a rebuilt one. Id love to stroke it (hehehehe stroke it, thats funny) but ive heard that it will run about $5k to do all the mods to it. I searched and i found a bunch of posts of rebuilt engines on here, so i should get one soon.

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Water is incompressible so if it gets into the cylinders, the result is at best two bent rods (because two pistons will be at TDC). At worst you could break a rod altogether and it goes through the block, so you're lucky it went through the pan instead. Consider yourself even luckier if the rod hasn't taken out the crank or the cam.
Either way, you're looking at a full engine rebuild so take off the holed pan as a first step to assess the damage. If the crank is badly damaged, this'll be the time to think about converting your 4.0 into a stroker. You'll need at least two new rods anyway so you might as well get a set of six 258 rods to go with the 258 crank and take the stroker route.
Opportunity knocks.