water in to AFM...=(
 

hi everyone...i was driving home last night while it was raining...and after driving for about 20mins...the car seemed like it was losing a lot of power...the temp. started to get higher..also it sounded like the exhaust got quiter...? i wasnt too far from my house when all this happened so i parked in the garage and checked what was wrong...i obviously saw that the afm had sucked in a lot of water...so the next day i went out and bought one at a junkyard for 40$ (pretty cheap from a junkyard) so i replaced it but sadly the car still had the same problem...i would try to give it gas but it would feel like it had no power at all...i would hold down to full throttle but it only goes up to 5krpm...the slowly go down but its still on full throttle...i was wondering if anyone have ever had the same issues when the sucked in water into there intake system and what kind of symptoms you guys had...thanks for reading guys!!! i appreciate it ^_^

check your spark plugs.
When water got sucked into the engine, its basically steam cleaning the inside. Lots of people use this method to clean the internals. The spark plugs sometimes gets messed up in the process.
I dont think anything would be wrong with your afm though, there is no sensor that is exposed in the pathway of the afm since its basically a lever type afm. The sensor is encased on top of the afm.

Has the intake piping been modified? Where is the actual intake point positioned? If the engine sucked in a little water mist, I would not expect an repurcussions from that. However, if a lot of water was ingested, you may have really messed up the engine. Have a proper compression test done to determine the health of the engine.

On the other hand, your problem could be the result of some other malfunction entirely and just coincident with the water-AFM situation.

thanks for reading and responding guys...the engine is completely stock so nothing has been modified...i tried cleaning out the throttle body the other but to my luck its still the same...i havnt checked out the spark plugs yet..since that you mentioned that im gonna check the conditions on them...i know the air pump sucks air from the air intake box also..would that cause any issues if it sucked up some water in there? and by the sound that the car makes when its idling it seems like there some type of blockage in the exhaust system because it dramatically got quite..?

you have a catalystic converter?
It might be clogged from the water burning.

Have you tried putting the original AFM back in the car? Used replacements aren't guaranteed to work either. There's really no way for water to damage the AFM unless the seal around the cover is broken, and that's on the outside. Water on the inside should not have any path to the circuit board under the cover.

I'd check electrical connectors for water, inspect the spark plugs and look for anything else out of the ordinary. As Go48 suggested, it may just be coincidence that you found water in the AFM.

Water making its way to the main cat (via the air pump) wouldn't hurt anything. Water vapor is one of byproducts of the oxidation of hydrocarbons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter), so it's always present.

buy or rent a vacuum gauge. Hook it up to a point on the intake manifold. Start the car and watch the vacuum. Now snap the throttle open and shut quickly one time (do it at the throttle body so you can see the vacuum gauge.) The vacuum should suddenly drop, then once the throttle plate is shut, return to a strong vacuum. If it drops then SLOWLY returns, or lingers around 0-ish, then you probably have a clogged cat. At that point, crawl under your car with a 17mm socket w/extention and ratchet and unbolt the exhaust from the manifold. Don't completely remove the bolts, just enough to where the exhaust sort of hangs a little. It'll get loud as hell, but this won't be for long. Start the car, snap it once again. If the vacuum returns instantly after releasing the throttle valve, then you have found your problem. I'm going to tell you that the proper thing to do is to replace your catalytic converters if you determine they're bad, but it's your car :)