Lightning and a RRS - Does not end well for the RRS systems

[101RRS]

In Canberra this afternoon we had a huge storm which resulted in all my gutters overflowing and water entering the garage. The RRS was parked out on the front lawn

I went out to the front porch to see what was happening and all of a sudden there was a bright blue light and a huge noise and I went holy $#!T - when I recovered there was a lot of blue thick smoke and a burning smell in the courtyard next to me. Looking around I also noticed my pergola was missing one of the supporting posts - there were matchsticks scattered over the front yard and next doors to about 40m away. The RRS was parked about 4 feet from the blown up timber.

What seems to have happened was there was a dual bolt of lightning that struck a garden shredder in the courtyard and the second bolt hit the treated pine post - now I am about 2' away from the shredder and about 12' from the pergola post. The shredder was still smoking and it looks like a welder has hit it on its side. The post was ripped out of the brickwork and the top half turned into splinters and with the car being so close some metal hit the bonnet and put a 50mm scratch in it. The lightning bolt went through the pergola and did not damage it except for the post, did not damage the tree over the pergola, did not damage metal work on the house or overhead wires only 10' away but did blow all the circuit breakers and earth leakage breaker.

This is a pic of the courtyard where I store my junk from where I was standing - in the foreground the bolt hit the shredder where the blue tarp has a hole in it - the brick and and solar light did not move - the remains of the post is behind the bike cover. You can just see the car through the shade cloth.



Now to the car - here is how close the car was - the post where the lightning struck was just to the right of the shade cloth.



The car started Ok soon after but later started having major issues.
Every fault known to man now pops up, the hazards switch themselves on, the doors lock and unlock by themselves, strange noises from behind the dash - if you switch the engine off it will not restart - no starter motor turning until after the hand brake light goes out.

A short vid of what happens.
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A short vid of what happens after a hard reboot.
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I subsequently took it for a drive - down on the stops, all dash fault lights on, will get up to 60kph but very sluggish - hazard lights on and cannot turn them off.

I guess I need to book it in to a workshop and get it on the test computer - I only wish I had a few options locally for checking the car out.

Not happy Jan.

Garry

[discowhite]

what the chances of that happening!!!

and whats the chances of the insurance covering it? would they class that as an act of god?

hope you get it sorted.

cheers phil

[oldsalt]

Geez Gary - what a bummer - hope you get it all sorted out O.K. - I got hit a few times whilst driving aircraft, it just resulted in a big flash and the "loss" of the wing tips and the top of the tail, all sacrificial parts and no big deal - scared the pax sh##less though !!!!!
Good luck
cheers

[RangieBit]

Hey there Garry,

Sorry to hear of your close encounter with the terrible forces of nature. Lucky you were somewhat elsewhere when the event occurred.

Although I am far from any expert here, it sounds to me like your RRS electronics got EMP'd or at least had a surge current. I really don't wish to be a harbinger of doom. Your symptoms and description of the event worry me more than a little.

I hope that I am wrong. One of the unfortunate side effects of high voltage discharge (approx 2 million volts in a lightning strike will qualify) is very similar to a nuclear detonation. A very strong electro-magnetic pulse.

Lots of military computer systems are hardened/insulated against this sort of thing by being encapsulated in multiple faraday type shielding. Regrettably car electronic control units don't enjoy this expensive luxury.

The proximity of the car to the strike with very little metal between the do-dads and the impact worries me greatly. Even the static discharge across the wet ground between your patio and the car won't have helped matters as this will be seen as a significant voltage spike by the electronics in the car. Unlike Oldsalt's aircraft, where bits of the airframe suffered for carrying the voltage/current, your car got the voltage spike grounded so the current differential was painfully large. This is evidenced by that fact that your house ELS tripped.

Hope at worst it's just a loss of memory on the part of some of the ECU's and they simply need to be reloaded. The EMP will act like an re-programmer and void the contents of some normally non-volatile memory in ECU's.

Hope your tale does have a happy ending and I look forward to your advice that all ends well. Good luck with it.

As an aside, the statistics say that a person who survives being struck by lightning once will be struck, with certainty, a second time. Some people have been known to be struck over a dozen times. Nature is just plain weird and some people seem to be natural lightning rods!

Cheers,
Iain

[Blknight.aus]

have you noticed how every system thats coming up faulted has solenoids in it?

[Graeme]

Time to buy a lottery ticket, Garry! Fortunately it was the post that got blown to pieces, not you. Note to self - do not lean on verandah post during a storm!

[sheerluck]

Whoa, that was a close one! Though, as bad as it looks, it could have been worse. Old mother nature has a lot of power at her disposal!

[stig0000]

mmmm cant say for sure,, but that's probs fried the CJB and couple other units, obviously the PCM engine software side is ok as when you could the engine started and ran fine,, id hope its insured and they right it off as that will be a ongoing electrics nightmare, but i hope its at least its poped a few fuses, i gota feeling thats going to get expensive

[101RRS]

Thanks for all those comments - insurance wise it is the first day of my new Allianz comprehensive car insurance - I wonder how it would look if I claimed on the first day of the insurance.

HOWEVER - it looks like all is well. I noticed that the Scangauge had lost connectivity with the car so I disconnected it and immediately systems started coming back - just a couple at a time after restarts - after three restarts all the lights were gone and no warnings in the message center.

Went for a 10k drive and all well. When I got back I plugged the Scangauge back in and 5 secs later all the gongs, warnings and lights started again - remove it and after 3 starts all is back to normal. So it looks like there was a EM pulse which the car survived but took the Scanguage out.

Lightning - a strange thing - as I said - scared the crap out of me (glad I was under the porch roof), it bypassed a whole lot of things in the way - hit the side of the shredder that was under a plastic blue tarp and zapped the post and blew it out of the wall, yet left the nearby tree and pergola untouched. No smoke at all from the post but the smoke from the shredder was quite thick - when it stops raining I will see if it still works.

I am somewhat relieved that the car now seems to be OK. The Scangauge was a nice piece of kit and I will probably get another one.

Cheers

Garry

[stig0000]

oh wow,, thats good,