If the water is still or slow moving I have had a blazer in the water up the bottom of the steering column. If it moving fairly good you will have to decide whether it is safe or not on site. You don’t have to worry about DC systems shorting out when it gets wet like you do for an AC system. It does help if your fuse box is water proofed and that can be done fairly easy and you can find a lot of sights online about the subject. You can have a snorkel system installed and then to can play submarine if you want.

there are trucks that have railroad wheels attached to them so they can operate either on a roadway or a railroad track. don't know if they are still around - maybe the company has one of them?

I'm not an expert, but I think previous posts have covered the main issues quite well.

Your employer's maintenance contractor should be able to tell you if the vehicle has been 'proofed for water crossings.

If you go through the same crossings regularly, get your crew to pound in metal garden stakes (6' garden T-stakes are cheap) to give a visual indication of the water level. Could save you a lot of grief.

My two-cent's worth.

Interesting, purposely creating a bow wave is actually a water fording technique? I had learned a long time ago that a common reason why cars stall in water is because their owners drive too fast, which forces water into the enclosed engine compartment from the front or splashes up from below, which then chokes the air intake, causes electrical issues, etc.

As an avid off-roader and one that drives through lots of swampy water in the NJ Pine Barrens there are a few things that you need to know.
1. Open the hood of the vehicle on a nice day and look for the air intake. This is your "I can't go any deeper than that" point. If you do you will suck water into the intake and through the carb or throttle body then into the engine. Engine does not burn water. Engine is done, you're stuck and have major repiars to do to engine. Don't ask me how I know this.
2. Before entering water; standing of moving, get some sort of stick and walk throuch the water, measuring how deep it is. Use this as a reference for your intake point.
3. If you think you can make it safely through the water, put the vehicle in 4wheel low with the transmission in low gear and slowly, very slowly drive through the water. You want to cause as little wake as possible. Keep moving slowly, don't stop unless you absolutely have to. If you stop the water that you have pushed with the vehicle will usually come back to the vehile and you may have a wave higher than your intake point.

Slow and steady wins the water race.

I like ducktapeguy's thinking.

I often drive over flooded roads (still-water usually caused by beavers, up to about 30" deep) and I always walk through the new ones first to check for hidden hazards. This will reduce the risk of crossing flooded areas and prevent you from taking a serious heckling from your co-workers for getting stuck and needing a tow out!

As already mentioned, stakes along the edge of the flooded road help gauge changes in water depth and also direct you to stay on the road-bed. Twice I have rescued people who have dropped off the road-bed into the same lake while launching a boat, it is not that the water is dangerous (no current and about 5 feet deep) but that it is a 16km walk out to the highway.

I caught a group of grown men one time throwing big rocks (about 1 foot in dia.) into a large deep murky puddle on a Hydro access road, to discourage other people from traveling into the public area where they were hunting/fishing. It was difficult not to laugh as they waded into the slop to remove the rocks, so an unknowing person driving through the flood did not injure themselves or there property.

Another nasty trick is to pour paint or stain into a stagnant puddle, every vehicle that drives through it after that gets an unwanted paint job.

You do not see things like this often but when you do it can really upset you, most people have much more respect in the woods.

Mike

I should have specified that I don't go into moving water. I'm from desert country and know all about that. DDIS... Don't Do It, Stupid!

The water I go through is like small ponds up to about 100'long. These are areas sort of like gullies alongside the tracks. Actually, they're gullies with deeper gullies on the edges. I heard that one driver rolled his Suburban from the central gully into the side gully; it took two wreckers to drag it out, and they had to move the train to do it.

What are 'frame rails'? Is that about as high as the bottom of the door?

Thank you for all the info. This company is more concerned that you know how to do all the paperwork, more than driving: "Here's a key. There's the car that it fits. Drive it."

Sue

My company's "maintenance contractor" is JiffyLube. Need I say more? My vehicle has been running for three weeks with the 'check engine' light on, at my manager's insistance.

Six-foot T-stakes! YIKES! Those things cost $4.15 each! The RR only made over a billion dollars last year... do you think they're MADE of money???

My crews only run the trains, period. Conductors, engineers, brakemen, switchmen.

Sue

Good advice so far. Slow and 4 Low are generally good. Checking the depth and the bottom is also good. I've crossed a lot of rivers in Colorado, but they have all had good gravel bottoms, good traction. Been in water about a third up my door (old 88 Toyota pickup), probably 3 ft. or so.

If you submerge your wheel bearings, they will need maintenance, as in re-packing. I don't know if that SUV has sealed bearings or not. If so, then it might be a problem. Some other areas that don't like to get dunked are your front and rear differentials, transmission, and transfer case. I routed all the breathers on mine waaaay up so that they wouldn't suck in water. If you get water in any of those, it needs to come out and quickly. One way to do that is to stop for an hour or so, let the water settle to the bottom, and crack the drain plug, but tighten it back up when oil starts coming out - remember water is heavier than oil. It will still need a fluid change soon, though.

If your door seals are bad, find out where the computer is. Usually, there is at least one in the passenger footwell. If that gets wet, it's quite expensive.

Don't let the vehicle stall in the water if the tailpipe is submerged. Water can create enough back pressure to prevent starting, or make it very hard.

Your frame rails are the parts of the frame that run from bumper to bumper. They are lower than the door.

Basically, if you submerge it, it needs fluids changed, bearings and driveshafts repacked. If water gets in, rust soon follows, and that's real trouble.

I put over 280,000 miles on my Toyota with LOTS of off-roading and water crossings, no problem, but I am anal about the maintenance also.

With the addition of the snorkel to my 4Runner it's possible to run in water deep enough to reach the roof as long as it didn't go higher then the snorkel intake. The deepest to date has been to the fenders which would have caused water to get into the stock air intake tube.


Check out this deep water crossing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1T7j_PIhew