I’ve been talking to many people lately about the fact if a car is flooded, stay away from it. You have to gut the thing down to bare metal and redo all the wiring, replace all mechanics for a decent chance of the car being usable… If you just dry out a car, replace fluids and go. You’ll be fine for a month or two. But then the electrical shorts will start acting up. And then later the metal that was soaking in water (though cleaned up) starts rusting. Well I just ran acrossed an article that warns that the Katrina flooded vehicles are starting to show up in California. So before you buy that used / ALMOST NEW used car, get a carfax report and find out where it’s from.
If a car can survive Katrina, it must be good?
Fri Jan 27, 2006 9:40 AM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Unscrupulous dealers have been selling automobiles flooded in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as far away as California, the state’s insurance commissioner said on Thursday.
John Garamendi warned that some dealers and salvage yards were selling cars water damaged in places such as New Orleans, which was hit by both hurricanes last year. The cars had been dried out and cosmetically cleaned for resale, he said.
“We actually know of about just a handful at the moment. We came across seven in Los Angeles at an auto auction,” he said in an interview. “We know of at least one here at an auto auction yard in northern California.”
“We suspect that this is the very tippy top of the proverbial iceberg.”
His office said flood-damaged vehicles had shown up in other states including Arizona, Florida and New York.
The insurance commissioner estimated that as many as 600,000 vehicles were damaged by floods along the Gulf Coast states last year.
“Many of those are being shipping out of there, reconditioned, and we now see at least a few of them showing up in California and there is probably many, many more,” Garamendi said.
