I purchased a flood hit but running Toyota Etios GD SP for a relative and ended up keeping the car after the relative chickened out after a small breakdown.
Summary of observations:
1.The car was flooded almost till the dash top but the engine or the gear box were not affected by water ; the car is still on the pre-flood engine oil but transmission oil was changed as part of restoration.
2.There was no impact to the ECU or the ABS motor.The ABS motor coupler showed no moisture or dirt
3.AC Blower lobe assembly bearing was found kaput; replaced the assembly
4.The BCM-cum-speedo assembly needed replacement
5.The carpet remained soaked wet even after eight months post flood - this was causing some foul smell in the cabin.
6.Airbag circuit observed working fine
7.Boot had negligible dirt inside ; there was no mud deposition anywhere near the rear apron joints.
8.The radiator fan was vibrating badly with vibrations seeping into the cabin too
9.Except the ac blower motor bearing , no other bearing made any noise.
THE FIRST DEBACLE
While driving the car after taking delivery , we stopped to fill in diesel and after that to fill air ; after the air fill , the engine would crank but not fire.
Called Lanson Toyota but their mobile unit wasn't able to check in situ , so asked the car to be towed to the workshop which we did using a Tata ACE.
Diagnosis showed Injector #1 failure and Fuel injection module malfunction for which Toyota asked for the ECU and injector#1 to be replaced which was 75k.
I paid just the scan and check charges of Rs.1035 and got the car out of the service center.
The guy from whom I got the car is a motor mechanic.He came and got the engine started .
The cause of engine not firing was a bad injector#1.He specialises only in Toyota Etios and had a spare injector with him ; put that in and primed the nozzle diesel feed line and then tightened the injector nut and voila , the engine fired.
He wasn't satisfied with the performance of the engine so swapped that injector with a good one from his other car, and we thus ended up starting up both my car and his car on the roadside in the night. We started at 8pm and finished the job at 11:30pm just outside Lanson Toyota Pallikaranai.
Here is a pic of the old injector
CHECK POINTS DURING RESTORATION
1.Engine and Transmission
The engine oil was in perfect shape so let it be ; drained the transmission oil and expected it to be like emulsion but it was sans water
2.Radiator Fan
The vibrating fan made us believe that it was the motor ; however some fundamental knowledge of roto balancing made me look at the fan itself and here is what we found on the fan hub
The fan blade and hub was cleaned with water and refitted ; bingo - no vibrations
3.AC Controls backlights not working
The bulbs were found fused ; tried getting them but nobody in Chennai had them. These are midget sized bulbs with a small holder.
Decided to build the lighting using LED strips , spliced the backlight wires and attached them and the LED lights worked
4.AC Ducts
Removed the dash center and side panels - There was a lot of dried mud on the outside of the AC ducts ; cleaned it all off first with a damp cloth and then disinfected the area using SURGICAL SPIRIT (Yes-Surgical Spirit).
The inside of the AC ducts were reasonably clean but disinfected them as well using surgical spirit.
5.Carpet
Removed the seats and the carpet and yukkkk - there was this strong stench that emanated from the floor thanks to soaked foam pads.
Eight months of stagnant water was unbearable. I was in no mood to take pics and just discarded the foam pads. The carpet was like this.
Split the vinyl and the fabric carpets and cleaned them independently with Lizol solution and allowed them to dry in the Chennai sun.
Followed up with a vinyl dressing for the vinyl carpet.
Refitted the carpets after providing a layer of 10mm EPE foam on the floorpan(remember , the soaked foam pads were discarded)
6.Floorpan
Cleaned the floor out with Lizol in water - it took three rounds(bucketfuls) to clean one quarter.
Here is how muddy the water was after the second round
7.Door Pads and Doors
Removed , cleaned and refitted the doorpads. The power window switches were all fine.
The inside of the doors had approx. 50gms of dust at the bottom which I removed through the door drain holes using a soft brush
8.EPS Control module and Immobiliser assembly
The motor was serviced but the EPS module and the immobiliser were replaced - since the immo was replaced , both the existing keys had to be reprogrammed.
9.ICE
The JVC HU had disintegrated ; replaced it with a Pio X1890UB with two new 6.5 inch speakers and two tweeters.The stock double cone 5.25 inchers were working but the stock tweeters weren't ; decided to replace all of em.
10.Rear Seat
One of the mounts had broken ; it was a pain to repair this using Fewikwik and Mseal and refit the seat but then finally grease was used as a lube to help the seat mounts slot in properly.
11.Seat covers and seats were intact - the seat slide rails were just serviced using WD40.
THE FINISHED PRODUCT
W -I -P
Final
I did up my petrol Premier Padmini in 1998 post floods in Surat but this new gen oil burner took a lot lot more effort .
No corner was left uninspected during the process of inspection and rectification.
I must thank my trusted FNG duo of Senthil and Nandakumar for helping me through this effort.
The first emergency described at the start of this thread led me to my first visit ever to an auth. service center viz.Lanson Toyota Pallikaranai.I was impressed with their professionalism , particularly the help rendered by the SA Bharath Kumar.
My confidence in Toyota has risen significantly after seeing how well the car held up against flood damage even after 8 months of being idle.