I have a stock 2019 Cat, so stock air intake and with the dual snorkel hood. Since I have more opening in the hood as opposed to the single scoop hoods, I might be more vulnerable to water getting in their?
Can't recall seeing this done to Dodge cars but it is common to subject a test mule to a deluge to test the car's ability to shed water without it accumulating where it might flow into some area where it shouldn't.
Almost certainly the Hellcat was subjected to this.
When I washed my Hellcat -- and the Hellcat was not my first car with a vented hood -- I was careful to minimize applying water to the hood and the vents. While I was not that concerned about water flowing through the vents -- I had checked the engine compartment under the vents and there was nothing really to worry about being affected by any water -- I figured why push my luck.
Sure one could dump a 5 gallon bucket of water at the vent, or direct a stream of water at the air intake hole, but what's the point? The outside of the car is being washed not the engine compartment.
I drove the Hellcat in rain. I didn't worry about any rain water making it through the engine air intake hole and possibly fouling the filter with water.
What I learned to avoid years ago is driving through standing water of an unknown depth. In this case if the water is deep enough, which one can't control, or the vehicle's speed too great, which one can control, water can build up and if it gets to the height of the air intake hole this could flood the filter housing possibly bad enough to cause the engine to ingest water which can result in hydro locking the engine with serious consequences to the engine.
As an aside, some months ago a heavy rain hit the area. I was out in my van. I drove down a road and encountered an area of the road which had been flooded, flooded to at least several feet deep. While the road was not flooded when I passed through I could see from the debris left on the surrounding grass just how deep the water got. There were two vehicles on the road that were obviously "overcome" by the depth of the water. One was a late model BMW. The BMW dealer was just a block or so north of this area of the road. The other was a late model Challenger. There was a Dodge dealer a door or two further north of the BMW dealer.
My take away as if it needed reinforcement was to avoid driving my Challenger (the Hellcat was gone by this time but I had replaced it with a 2020 Scat Pack) through standing water.
On similar note even if the water depth is not that much and you keep the car's speed down, if there is the chance another vehicle from the other direction can pass through water at the same time as you and your vehicle do it might throw up a bow wake that could flood your car's air intake.
Pretty much if I come to a flooded road I turn around.
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