Driving the C5 with even a stock filter should be done with care through standing water. It's not the S. Fl. regular violent rains that cause problem-but the deep puddles and poor drainage in living at/around sea level on coral

 

Geez, give Glen a break. He was just trying to keep you out of grief. I have a VaraRam and I love it. I don't drive in the rain with it if I can help it. I don't fear the rain with it either. What I fear are the lousey roads full of potholes that fill up with water here in northern NJ, the soccer moms driving minivans, and girlie-men supplementing their manhood with Blazers, driving into them spraying water everywhere. Someday one of these eminently honorable and extremely intelligent citizens will pass me on the left while speeding in the rain and hit standing water and douse the nose of my car with 35 gallons of it. Then I'll have hydrolock. And I'll get their license plate and hunt them down and...

 

 

Vararam is easily the best designed system out there and I wish I was brave enough to use it. I'm not! I have the Vortex. Just looking at the Vararam design tells you the possibility exists to ingest water. I'm too scared to go for it as I love my Vettes and won't take the risk.

 

I had the Vortex before the Vararam. I'll be truthful with you. I choked the motor once with the Vortex. I went through a much larger than what it seemed- "puddle" of water. Actually, it was a flowing "river" from a previous downpour. The water choked the motor and the motor stalled. It didn't hydrolock, fortunately, but it did kill the motor. What happened was the Vortex, being a true bottom breather, was low enough to be under water when I went through the "flowing river of water". Since I was just idling, there wasn't enough suction to suck the water up into the intake. It just simply choked the motor from any air intake...kind of like sticking a piece of cardboard over the air intake, depriving the motor of any air. Had it been the Vararam, with its intake location relative to the ground, there wouldn't have been a problem. As it turned out, no damage ocurred and I went on my merry way. IMHO, the Vortex is more susceptable to standing ground water that you would typically run across after a heavy downpour compared to the Vararam. The intake for the Vararam is a little higher off the ground than the Vortex. No flames intended for the Vortex as its a very good intake system itself performance wise. Of all the people running Vararam on this forum, I have yet to run across any threads that blamed Vararam for any hydrolock situation. At least for not just simply driving through a torrential down pour.

 

The point we're trying to make is that there is no risk. You have as much of a chance of injesting water with a bottom feeder intake system like the Vortex as you do the Vararam.

 

I think you would have a better chance to hydrolock with the Vortex due to it is a bottom feeder and the spoiler would act as a scoop for the water.