Hurricane Ida Floods My BMW M240i Track Build
Just a few days after I got the Spec clutch broken in, my BMW M240i Track Build was caught in flood water from hurricane Ida. As you can see in the photos it was a bad day for the M240i. The water was over the bottom seat cushions at one point and to add insult to injury, the drivers side window opened by itself to let more rain in. Ida came through New Jersey in the evening of 9/1/21 and dumped 9+ inches of rain in just a few hours. Unable to get to the car until the following afternoon, the water and mud sat in the car for almost 24 hours.
Pumping out the water and assessing the damage
A submersible pool pump made quick work of pumping most of the water out but that was just the beginning of this messy job. I used a shop-vac to extract as much water out of the carpet as I could but it kept coming back. I placed a dehumidifier in the car and let it run overnight. It was full in the morning but the carpet was still soaked. After vacuuming repeatedly and running the dehumidifier non-stop it was clear that the carpets needed to come out. The carpet has a molded foam backing that’s attached to the carpet itself and it was saturated like a sponge. Due to future mold concerns, I ordered new carpets from my local dealership. They come in two pieces, a front section and a rear section.
Because the seats were under water it’s going to be easier to replace them as well. The drivers seat was still moving but the motor or switch was shorted out because it moved forward when you moved the switch backward and vice versa. Because all the motors were underwater along the side seat mounted airbags I didn’t feel comfortable trying to salvage anything in the seats. Besides, the foam was soaked and would probably have mold going forward.
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Total It? Not a Chance
The insurance company took one look and wanted to total it. I talked them out of that and decided to put the payout toward something better: a proper track-focused M240i. I already had an LSD differential in the car before the flood, so I had a solid baseline to build from.
Tearing It Down and Drying It Out
First we pulled the seats, center console, subwoofers, and carpets. We vacuumed all the standing water out, then went over everything with compressed air to blow the hidden spots dry. After that a dehumidifier ran inside the car for two full days, followed by an ozone generator for two hours to kill off any mold before it could take hold.
Checking the Electrics (the Scary Part)
This is where a flood car lives or dies. Before any reassembly we checked every electrical connector for corrosion, sprayed them with DeoxIT, and reconnected each one with a little dielectric grease to lock in a clean connection. Here is the lucky break: the car was parked pointing slightly uphill, so the water came up over the bottom of the front seat cushions but never reached up under the dash, where most of the electrical boxes and modules live. That was very good news.
Putting It Back Together
Reassembly started with a brand new carpet from the dealer and new seat modules (the originals had shorted out) so I could bolt the seats back in while the new aftermarket seats were on the way. Once everything was buttoned up it was time for the moment of truth, a test drive. No warning lights, no gremlins, no issues. The car was back.
The Fun Part: Building a Track Car
With a healthy car and insurance money in hand, this turned into the build I always wanted. The list so far:
- Bootmod3 tune
- High-flow downpipes
- Spec Stage 2+ clutch
- HPFP (high-pressure fuel pump) upgrade
- KW V3 coilovers
- Custom M2 N55-based exhaust, finally with quad tips 🙂
- Custom exhaust-valve actuator switch in the center console (I grabbed a cheap PWM generator off eBay and figured out how to actuate the valve on the bench before installing it)
- Camber plates
- Hawk HP+ brake pads and stainless steel brake lines
- Toyo R888R tires
- Aftermarket intake, turbo inlet pipe, chargepipe, and more
What started as a total-loss flood car is now one of my favorite builds. Funny how that works. If you want the background on where this M240i started, check out the M240i street/track build overview.