Did your jeep get caught in the rain, when going out with your top down ? Was the inside of the jeep soaked? If this is your first time this happened, then first you have to take a deep breath and read this article till the end.
I’ll take you through a guide on how to get water out from your jeep, set it dry again and steps you can take to protect your essentials from further damages.
First you have to disconnect the battery, remove all the carpets. Then you can drain water through drain holes. After that you can dry soaked seats and interior properly according to the following guide.
Let’s jump in to the detailed guide.
Contents
Disconnect electronics from the battery
If your jeep interior is caught in rain and soaked, disconnect the jeep electronic system from the battery when you come to home as soon as possible.
Because your jeeps electronic system is not completely water proof. To avoid complications that can happen by short circuits of your electronics, this is the best step that can take first.
Then keep them to dry themselves with air and sunlight.
We’ll take a look at what we can do for electronics later on this article. As a safety step first disconnect battery wires.
Remove carpets
Heavy rain can make puddles on the floor of a jeep. So before drying the jeep you have to remove all the front and backseat carpets from your jeep.
Sometimes carpets are tucked in to the interior trims and under the seats.so don’t try to pull them. You have to carefully remove them from those places.
Then hang them for dry under sunlight and air. Keep in mind to dry them thoroughly.
Otherwise molds and mildew will destroy your carpets that are produced due to wetness.
Drain water
After removing and caring about carpets you have to drain the collected water on the floor.
For that jeeps have drain plugs on the floor. Normally a 4 doors jeep has 10 drain holes and a 2 doors jeep has 8 drain holes.
The place may be varied according to the jeep models and manufactured years.
But generally they are placed on each front floor board(2 holes for each), under the seats (1 hole per each), in the cubby and tyre jack storage area (1 hole in each).
These numbers may be varied. But I just mentioned here for you to find out them if you don’t know where they are.
Drain holes are covered by drain plugs. You can remove them by hand or with the help of a flat head screwdriver.
You can push them underneath of the vehicle by the screw driver to take them out. After removing them you can drain the water from the floor.
You can use a dry vacuum to remove the water efficiently if you have one. If you don’t have a vacume cleaner, open/ remove doors and keep under sunlight for fast drying.
Keep in mind to re-plug the drain plugs after finishing the drying purpose.
Dry soaked seats
Next thing that gives you a huge headache apart from electronics is the seats.
If your seats don’t have waterproof covers this will be a worst case. But don’t panic. You can dry them out if you have a hot/sunny evening.
Other than that you can shop vac the seats. But air drying is best for the seats.
Or else you can do some workout with a chamois towel. Roll it to a tube shape.
Then press and roll over the soaked seat. Then squeeze and dry out the chamois.
You can remove a huge amount of water from this method. After that it’s better to give a sunbath to your seats for more safety.
You don’t have to worry about seats. just follow these methods. They will work fine.
Don’t keep your leather seats under the sunlight for drying. They can get stiff and hard. Just dry them with a towel and use non dyed “leather balm” on leather seats.
Care about electronics
As mentioned at the beginning of the article the electronic system is more vulnerable to damage when contact with water.so you have to be very careful about that.
To avoid short circuits, the first thing is disconnecting the power if you feel like your electronic system had contact with water.
Mainly your radio/player, multi function steering wheel, AC system and switches of lights will mainly be affected by rain.
Especially in jeeps, in the multi function steering column there is a “clock spring” . It is not really a spring.
There are sets of copper wires in a ribbon design with plastic encase. It maintains the connection of the wires when the steering wheel is turned.
Somehow it is not fully waterproofed. So there’s a chance for the water that enters to the steering column to short those wires or change the signal characteristics.
So that best thing is give time to dry out the electronics. It can fasten by keeping the vehicle under sunlight with the top down and doors off/open.
After drying connect the battery and check whether all the things are correctly functioning.
If all are working properly you are lucky.
If not then you may have to check that relevant part for repairing or replacements.
If you are not a professional in electronics it’s best to not mess with those electronics especially with the clock spring.
Clock spring is responsible for air bags also. So it’s better to meet a professional for advice for your case.
Even if you drain your vehicle and keep under sunlight there may be some areas that are still wet.
So check properly your vehicle before fitting the carpets.
Specially areas under the jack may remain water and this can cause rusting.
So careful about such areas and vacuum them or dry them thoroughly.
Conclusion
After doing the above things your jeeps will be good to go for your next adventure.
Generally jeep interiors are not much harmed by rain because those materials are resistant for the water.
But they are not fully water proof. If the interior gets soaked you have to spend a few days setting it back to the normal condition.
But after that it will work fine. Because they are jeeps.
The problems may be caused if you have a ton of electronic appliances in it.
They may not be very friendly with water.
So that you have to take care of that. Apart from that you just have to follow this guide if your jeep gets soaked.
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Have fun and safe off-roading !!
