Idle problems after taking on H2O

[bajaboy13]

Please help... I am trying to help a friend troubleshoot her '01 Jetta problem as there are no VW shops around where we live and no shop seems to carry a decoder that would work for her car.
She recently took on a large pool of water on the road due to flooding. Since then her car has been idling very rough, but it seems to be in intermittent problem. I went and looked at it and it was in fact idling rough at extremely low rpm's(only a couple hundred) and expelling a foul smell from the exhaust. I had her rev and hold it at about 2k for a few minutes and it sounded just fine. All cylinders were firing and there was no pinging or knocking. After releasing the pedal and letting it idle, it seems to idle fine at a little less than 1k rpm. She then drove it home and that's when she said the check engine light finally came on (this is several days after the initial problems arose). The next morning she went to start it for work, and it did the same thing. It would barely stay running.
Most of my info on the problem is second hand from her, but I do know it was caused from going through the water. It seems as though the issue exists, or is at least worse, when the engine is cold.

Any advise would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,

Paul

[DetroitMuscle]

She prolly sucked in some water into the motor, id get it to a mechanic asap, where is the car at that there is no VW dealerships or AUDI dealerships around?

[bajaboy13]

Originally Posted by DetroitMuscle

She prolly sucked in some water into the motor, id get it to a mechanic asap, where is the car at that there is no VW dealerships or AUDI dealerships around?

We're in Newport, Or. It's a little coastal town. The one foreign car shop is out "sick with the flu" as their message says. Perfect! Yeah I was wondering about that too, but she swears up and down that she was going slow through the water. I'd say it was about 1/2 foot deep. If she had sucked in water, I'd think there would be problems throughout the RPM range not just at idle? I was thinking it may be some sensor problem (possibly O2) or even the Cat converter.

[mitsu_eclipse95gst]

Are there any CEL's?

[CaseyVR6]

He said there is a CEL, just can't get it read because there are not autozone's around with an OBDII scanner.

All I can say is check the oil pan. I had a situation exactly like that and it turned out that a pothole in the puddle bottomed out my car and smacked the oil pan. Fast forward, I had to put in a new $6k engine. It does sound like you sucked in some oil and maybe damaged the throttle body. The other alternative is that the coil was temporarily drown in the splash, but that would resume normal driving after it dried out... been raining a lot lately?