If the car was submerged in fresh water for 2 days, it’s a writeoff from an insurance perspective even worse if it was submerged in brackish or salt water as that impacts parts salvage.
But everything is salvageable if cost is no impass and writeoff laws allow you to put it back on the road.
If you would be allowed to put it back on the road, and that’s a big if, you’ve got a big project on your hands.
You’d need to fully strip the car to a bare shell with all removable panels, doors, etc, also off the vehicle. Then you’d need to wash all body bits and clean all the silt and crud off the vehicle shell. it’s not so easy to do this well as there are many difficult to access places which would have silted up and if not cleaned well will cause corrosion at a later date. Once clean and dry, a corrosion inhibitor spray would be a great idea before the body is reassembled and bits that need lubrication are lubricated.
Then every other component must be stripped down to sub components level and washed clean then dried before inspection and repairs done followed by reassembly. Then that assembly can be reinstalled within the shell.
And this is where the difficulty lies as corrosion may have already started and such corrosion must be addressed which in most cases isn’t easy.
For example, all connector pins, looms, earth points, circuit boards, etc, must be cleaned, dried and inspected and any issues corrected. Yep, circuit boards.. Just addressing the connectors is a big PITA since connectors are sealed (generally IP66 or IP67 rated) but not water proof for permanent immersion in 2 meters of water (don’t thing even IP68 allows for that). So the seals on the connectors must be removed and wires depinned and the bits washed and dried before repinning, lubricating and resealing. And what’s the likelihood some pins are reinstalled in the wrong location? As such, it’s a long slow process with lots of cross checking and testing to ensure wiring will be ok.
Unfortunately many sub assemblies are often designed in a way where they can’t be easily dismantled which makes cleaning, drying and inspecting for damage a rather difficult task let alone the difficulty of reassembling things that weren’t designed to be pulled apart. And all electronic stuff must be fully disassembled to extract the circuit board and wash, clear and inspect for damage.… and then tested that it works post repair.… replacement is easier but that’s cost prohibitive... How many electronic modules, cluster, radio, etc exist in your car?
Some parts simply can’t be cleaned and inspected. All airbags and pyrotechnics devices must be disposed of and new items purchased. Not sure how many such devices your car has but I can’t see new driver and passenger airbags, side curtain airbags and seatbelt tensioners being cheap.
Headlamps, tail lamps, etc will be full of water and these aren’t easy to clean as they can’t be easily disassembled.
Haven’t even got to the interior but could the headlining even survive a dunking. Yes it can be cleaned but it could quickly resemble a bedouin tent in short time. Front seats need to be dismantled and their electrics stripped, cleaned, lubricated, reassembled, etc… But most of those seat motors aren’t designed for disassembly. And what about mould if it’s started to grow… it ain’t easy as stuff can’t be cleaned and dried quickly enough post flood so mould becomes a real problem...
And we haven’t even got to the mechanicals where the diff, gearbox and engine will need to be dismantled and cleaned as a simple oil changes won’t be enough as mud and grit got inside these parts (which is a certainty after 2 days under dirty water).
What about the shocks? mud and grit sitting around the shaft seals may mean a quick seal failure when back in service (unless these parts are also thoroughly cleaned as well).
It just doesn’t end as there is so so much to do if you want it done correctly and for it to last…
But shortcuts could be taken though these will come back and bite you or the next owner…
So it comes down to what you want to achieve, a quick clean up and flip for some $$ (where the car becomes someone else’s problem) or you want to do a proper job that far exceeds the value of the vehicle (because of emotional attachment)? Neither is a great thing to do…
As I said, anything is possible if money is no object but just be warned that if the insurance company marks it as a statutory write off and NZ laws are like Aussie laws, you won’t be able to put it back on the road regardless how well you do the work and how much monies you’ve spent doing the work.
So check the writeoff laws in NZ so you clearly understand the rules and the difference between statutory or economic writeoffs. You also need to clearly understand whether the insurance company will flag the VIN in some database as a statutory or economic writeoff as that will have impact on re-registration.
And again, understand the rules around repairing an economic writeoff as down under it’s a complicated process with certified engineers needing to sign off on the repairs (so they have their own rules around what they want to see).
Understand the rules BEFORE you take a settlement and BEfORE you spend a few thousand hours and tens of thousands of dollars trying to resuscitate this drowned car.
