In October 2004, the car injested a little water with the super low air intake (redesigned) and it was also my fault. In a absolute fall Michigan downpour, I couldn't see a thing, and I ran into a large "puddle" of water. Things would never be the same. I knew right away what happened, steam was coming from everywhere, the car died right in the middle of it.

However, the turbo saved my engine. Nearly all my pipes were filled with water. (to see how bad, check out this 5mb video: Near Hydrolock!) The turbo snuffed out the airflow because of the weight of the water, and shut the engine down due to lack of air before all that water gushed into it. I spent about 4 hours on a miserable Sunday afternoon emptying all the pipes and spent about 30 minutes trying to get it to crank over. Finally it started up... flashing check engine lights all over the place for the first 3 seconds- so I let my scanner help me out- simply misfire codes, but it was running! After about an hour of letting the car idle, clearing the codes, and GENTLY revving to 3k, she got driven home! There were no bent rods, compression was good, WHEW!!

With a CAI intake, just like on an NA engine, you have the ability to hydrolock. It's not the same however. Now, any water that wants to make it to your engine has to travel through many feet of your piping, through spinning turbo fans, through an intercooler only meant to take gases, past a BOV and finally into the intake manifold- where your car dies. Of course, instead of maybe 1-2 PSI of pressure from an NA engine, now you have upwards of 8 psi; so the force is a lot higher. It comes out to about the same risk.. All that extra pressure forces the water through more feet of intake piping and intercooler. Be careful driving over puddles, be careful in the rain, AND DONT FOLLOW BEHIND TRUCKS/SUVS THAT KICK UP WATER. If you have a variable boost controller, it might be a good idea to turn the boost way down to 4 PSI or something horrible small when it rains.