It’s Engine 101: air compresses, water does not. If you are unlucky enough to have water go down the gullet of your engine and into the bores, your best hope in hell is that you shut the engine down quick enough to prevent damage. If you remove the spark plugs and blast the water out of the cylinders, you might even be okay. But if you don’t realize that the hood is underwater and you hold your foot to the floor hoping for the best, you will wind up in a hydrolocked condition: water will stop the piston from moving, your engine stalls, bad things happened to you. Idling through a creek that had a divot you never saw coming isn’t great, but there’s a chance you can bring your rig back to life. If you were going for that splash picture for your next big social media post and you wound up stuffing the front of a 22-year-old truck so far underwater that the radio started to radar-ping, then you’ve probably done some damage. Like, “Step one: Remove the damaged engine” bad.

So how bad can introducing an uncompressible into the inner workings of a giant fuel-driven air compressor be? Well…take one Lada, one engine marked for death, and enough water to drown the Navy with and let’s find out together, shall we? This isn’t a one-time shot, either…this engine is being tested to destruction.