Is this one of you lot pulling an Audi out of a ford?

The gearbox breather is at about 450mm. Axle breathers are slightly lower. I think Suzuki just choose the lower kingpin bearings as the thing they wanted to keep dry when deciding the wedding depth. There is some merit to that as it's the part that suffers most frequently from water ingress.

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And that is why I won't drive through water deeper than the bottom of my rims. There's always going to be a way round or over and if not I'll find higher ground and wait.



 

Me too!
I'd rather spend 20 minutes driving round the puddle than several days and ££££ sorting out the damage caused by water. (Even clean water, never mind mud slurry) There is a thread on MSE where someone has bought a Jeep and the transfer case is wrecked by water ingress no doubt from a previous swimming episode, and they are trying to reject it.

I was hosing mine down in the pouring rain on Friday, on my way home I could choose between the deep water by the landfill (who knows what is in that run-off), or the 50 yards of 4" deep raw sewage overflowed from the sewage works. So I gingerly crawled past the sewage works, (praying no-one came the other way to shower me with s###) and then had to hose all the underneath and topsides off while it was still wet.

You never go that way on a bicycle when it has been raining

Amazes me that idiots will try and drive through those brown coloured fords, they must be pure sewage! (Sewage farms always overflow and discharge into waterways when it is raining...)

Even if I had breathers and a snorkel fitted, I still wouldn't choose to drive through water that deep, you're just asking for trouble.

I think what I find most frustrating about adverse weather is not that it happens or even that we're seemingly unable to predict it with much accuracy it's more that in a lot of cases such events could be managed better with a coherent forward planning and maintenance policy. Unfortunately what we actually get is a half baked potato of a scheme drawn up by some clever academic graduates with zero real world experience and such proposals are implemented and maintained by contractors with no vested interest in the successful outcome of the project and a "that'll do" attitude. I'm not saying every major weather event is manageable especially in low lying areas I get that, but if the drains and ditches are maintained so that water has somewhere to go it's got to help?

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I think what I find most frustrating about adverse weather is not that it happens or even that we're seemingly unable to predict it with much accuracy it's more that in a lot of cases such events could be managed better with a coherent forward planning and maintenance policy. Unfortunately what we actually get is a half baked potato of a scheme drawn up by some clever academic graduates with zero real world experience and such proposals are implemented and maintained by contractors with no vested interest in the successful outcome of the project and a "that'll do" attitude. I'm not saying every major weather event is manageable especially in low lying areas I get that, but if the drains and ditches are maintained so that water has somewhere to go it's got to help?

In theory this sounds like a good idea but as I am a volunteer lock keeper with the Canal and River Trust I see first hand the devastation that flood water can cause. Rain occurs and the faster we try and move it into our main rivers the faster they fill up and the bigger the floods become. At the moment the Warwickshire Avon is 2 meters above red and the Severn is similar. Not surprisingly both rivers are closed to boats. Last Monday the Tardebigge  flight on the Worcester Birmingham canal was closed to traffic because of the volume of flood water from fields adjacent to the canal overflowed, poured into the canal and crippled the system. The weather is unpredictable - full stop - but the forecasting of it is dramatically better than it was 50 years ago. Sat. pictures are an invaluable aid, but it is not foolproof. In my neck of the woods the local councils contract the farmers to clean out ditches  but this has the knock on affect of moving the water at a faster rate so the floods happen lower down and the construction of new housing with roofs and roads that just speed up the process even more, we are just not going to win this one.

Roger
 

The problem we have is obviously different in that we are hills and dales which naturally focuses water runoff into fairly predictable places. That the graduate community then allocate these areas to housing or roads is beyond help. That this also often eradicates woodland etc is super beneficial too. I accept that moving my problems down stream onto the lower reaches of the Wharfe and Ouse is selfish but so is building on flood plains. Much like deliberately driving an inappropriate vehicle in an inappropriate manner through indeterminately deep water and expecting someone else to save you.