GLX woes (long)

["Benjamin W. Stein" <bstein@medill.net>]

About three weeks ago on my way home from a Cubs game (when they were
still able to play) I was driving my '97 glx in the midst of a
torrential downpour.  I had just commented to my brother that the car
really handles foul weather well.  We turned onto a street with an
underpass and there was some water in the underpass, but it didn't look
like all that much so I drove on.  Needless to say it was more water
than it looked like, probably 18" or two feet.  The car made it about
two thirds of the way through and then died.  The rain kept falling and
the water kept rising eventually the water made it to about three inches
below the door handles, and then stopped rising on the car.  After the
first as*hole in an SUV drove past we realized it stopped rising because
the car started floating.  Eventually we got towed out.  The car won't
start, so we push it to the side of the road.  We then notice that all
the idiots in the SUVs who came roaring past us hit the submerged curb.
Four of them were by the side of the road changing their right front
tires.

About four hours later we went back and tried starting the car again.
Eventually it kicks over, sounds like an inboard motor on a boat, and
spits our literally gallons of water from the exhaust system.  But now
the car has a ticking sound to it.  I take it to my mechanic, who
listens to it and basically says, "you're screwed call your insurance
company."  I do, they go look at it tell my mechanic to do what he needs
to fix it, they'll cover it (thank god).  He takes the engine apart,
finds the connecting rod on the number four piston is bent, "like a
pretzel", there is about a 15 degree bend in the connecting rod.  For
those of you that have not seen a connecting rod for a vr6, it is about
four or five inches long, three inches across and an inch thick, one
hell of a big piece of metal.  Turns out that water went in through the
air intake and was sucked into the cylinders, water doesn't compress
like air and presto, trashed engine.  The bent connecting rod drove the
piston into the cylinder wall digging a trough somewhere between 1/8"
and 1/4".

They call the insurance company back who tells them to go ahead and fix
the engine.  The total bill is $3700.  The bad news now is that three
weeks after this happened they just got the piston today, evidently it
came from Stuttgart.

I just want my car back.

Ben