Thread: Sealing Lucas in a watertight chamber

Which car and which part Dobbo?

Originally Posted by Slunnie

Which car and which part Dobbo?

Just say a gold rangie for arguements sake. a brainstorming idea as such, if you were to build a vehicle capable of deep wading (high over bonnets) Camel Trophey type wading, in all conditions and have it survive electrically what modifications would have to be made to the wiring loom, starter motors, batteries, lights etc for it to survive time and time again lets say no ecu's would be present on such a vehicle to make things as simple as possible. I know of someone who drove his series landy in a boghole recently to have it successfully return to the surface with Lord Lucas striking fear and damnation into every circuit on his vehicle, this in turn started a discussion amongst fellow drivers as to how to seal the curcuits from water, (boat style anti splash switches were mentioned as well as air tight chambers for fuseholders)

I was thinking the Disco2.


I'm not sure. The places I'd be looking at firstly would be all breathers to be raised up high, and loops put in the end of them so no Watagans (hypothetically) water or mud could get into them. Under bonnet, I would bring them up as high as I could at the back of the firewall. At the rear I would bring them up into pillar as high as the back seems to be where the water gets deepest (in the Watagans, hypothetically)


For the engine, I guess the usual snorkel, but I'm pretty sure you can also get these glove like things that go over the distributor and coil to keep the HT lead connections dry.

What I'm talking about simply wouldn't be possible on a D2, not even yours. Bogholes so deep the water is over half way up the windows type of wading. Silly stuff. Naturally differential, timing case(if applicable) and gearbox breathers would have water tight connections to a snorkle bonnet would be sealed to create a proper airpocket as such in the engine bay with radiator grille closed up with a rubber sealed venetian blind type setup (close on entry open on exit)

A true semi submersable vehicle, as basic as humanly possble so it can be sank, driven out or recovered, hosed down, no changing of fluids, drying out electrics etc....


Is it possible? Mechanically I think it can be, electrically I don't know.

For a petrol motor you would need to completely seal the engine bay as they did in some ww2 tanks, sealing a rangie electrically would be difficult. I would start by moving the coil to under the dash and inserting the leads into rubber tubing and sealing against the boots on both the plug and dizzy cap end and sealing up the dizzy or maybe using a hei dizzy. Alternator would die quickly being imersed in water.

Motorola made totally enclosed alternators. One was used on OMC Mustang 441 skid steer loaders. There is another US brand alternator for heavy vehicles and plant, Nihoof or Niehoff or something similar that they used to demonstrate immersed in water and sand or molasses and grit and so on.

Originally Posted by Slunnie

I was thinking the Disco2.


I'm not sure. The places I'd be looking at firstly would be all breathers to be raised up high, and loops put in the end of them so no Watagans (hypothetically) water or mud could get into them. Under bonnet, I would bring them up as high as I could at the back of the firewall. At the rear I would bring them up into pillar as high as the back seems to be where the water gets deepest (in the Watagans, hypothetically)


For the engine, I guess the usual snorkel, but I'm pretty sure you can also get these glove like things that go over the distributor and coil to keep the HT lead connections dry.

Hey Slunnie

Is that Simon? The bloke that we went playing at Zig Zag with?

Originally Posted by tombraider

Hey Slunnie

Is that Simon? The bloke that we went playing at Zig Zag with?

Slunnie = Simon is that what your asking?