This is a good thread in which to repeat two bad experiences of mine with watering the engine.
I had an ugly 84-ish Mitsubishi Eclipse(I can't remember the exact year now) as a temporary car. It ran really, really well. I decided to wash the engine with spray on engine cleaner. I then used the hose with sprayer nozzle to knock the cleanser and grease/grime all off. After that, the car would not start. I let it air dry in our hot, sunny weather to no avail. It turns out the distributor cap was about to crack from brittleness at any time and my hitting it with the jet spray opened the crack. I replaced the cap and turned on as good as ever. I could see the hairline crack on the cap.
The second one was on a previous Protege. I did the same washing and spraying but covered the distributor completely. After the wash, the car ran but horribly. I, once again, let the car drive around in the heat for about two days and it ran the same. It, fortunately, finally threw a code so the CEL came on. It showed a misfire on one cylinder. I checked the spark plug hole indicated by the code where the plug wire went into on the valve cover. Sure enough, it was the only one with water in it about half way up. I put a paper towel in there and then another until the hole was completely dry and left it in the sun a little more too. After that, no more misfire.
This spraying down the engine with even regular hose pressure is a hit-or-miss thing. Most of the time you will end up ok but there's going to be a time when it's going to make problems for you. I still don't know how an IAC code came up but Gybe's points are all sound possibilities so it was probably something like that.
I had an ugly 84-ish Mitsubishi Eclipse(I can't remember the exact year now) as a temporary car. It ran really, really well. I decided to wash the engine with spray on engine cleaner. I then used the hose with sprayer nozzle to knock the cleanser and grease/grime all off. After that, the car would not start. I let it air dry in our hot, sunny weather to no avail. It turns out the distributor cap was about to crack from brittleness at any time and my hitting it with the jet spray opened the crack. I replaced the cap and turned on as good as ever. I could see the hairline crack on the cap.
The second one was on a previous Protege. I did the same washing and spraying but covered the distributor completely. After the wash, the car ran but horribly. I, once again, let the car drive around in the heat for about two days and it ran the same. It, fortunately, finally threw a code so the CEL came on. It showed a misfire on one cylinder. I checked the spark plug hole indicated by the code where the plug wire went into on the valve cover. Sure enough, it was the only one with water in it about half way up. I put a paper towel in there and then another until the hole was completely dry and left it in the sun a little more too. After that, no more misfire.
This spraying down the engine with even regular hose pressure is a hit-or-miss thing. Most of the time you will end up ok but there's going to be a time when it's going to make problems for you. I still don't know how an IAC code came up but Gybe's points are all sound possibilities so it was probably something like that.
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