Someone has taken the old “babad mo sa bigas” trick to a whole new level.
YouTuber Rich Benoit, better known as Rich Rebuilds, as his moniker suggests, is an internet personality that's fond of restoring and rebuilding broken vehicles back into their running condition. His latest exploit? Try an old piece of advice that's being done whenever our phones accidentally get dropped in the water. But in Rich Rebuild's case, he wasn't dealing with phones. Instead, he's trying to prove if it's effective on an electric vehicle.
Rich purchased a flood-damaged Audi e-tron from an auction. From the listing, the EV was described as inoperable. The YouTuber got the e-tron for half the cost of a brand-new one, but since water stains appear on the seats and window glass, it had every indication of flood damage. While he and his team were able to fire up (or power up) the EV using a booster, they found various faults in its ECU and EV architecture, which led them to think there still could be moisture left in the car's electrical components.
As we all know, rice is known to absorb moisture. And as a result, Rich and his team decided to build a frame that would house the vehicle and hold up to 4,200 pounds of expired rice to dry it out. Once they were able to submerge the car in rice, they enclosed the structure and left it for a few days.
To everyone's surprise, upon unwrapping the car and vacuuming out all the rice, the car was able to power on and was even able to move under its own power. However, every fault code was still there and flashing on the dashboard. But either way, the rice may have really helped in reviving the vehicle.
And while they proved rice is effective, there's still a lot of work to be done in restoring the e-tron to near-factory condition. This is why we're better off distancing ourselves from buying flood-damaged vehicles, electric or not.
