The title pretty much says it all. I've always hosed down the engine compartment in my vehicles but I've never had something like this happen immediately afterward.

I have a code reader and it's getting a P0306 and a P0308 which is misfire on cyls 6 and 8. I don't know if it means anything but the EV led is blinking also. The manual says it's the Evaporative System Monitor. That doesn't make any sense. Can you tell I'm no mechanic?

Misfire sounds about right. It's idling roughly, stumbles on acceleration and is shaking as I drive down the road.

Clearly I got water somewhere it shouldn't be. I have no idea where that might be though. Any solutions?

 

well whatever cylinder is misfiring the coil packs are more than likely shot I would start by replacing them and see what happens after that.

 

Buy a large tube of dielectric grease (NAPA).

Pull the COP and blow the water out of the holes and the COPS using compressed air.

Reinstall each COP using a liberal amount of dielectric grease in each boot.

Resolve to never wash the engine again with a hose.

What "EV LED"? Is that on the scanner? If so, it may just be indicating an EV monitor that has not run.

Steve

 

I too have washed engines for years without probs until a few months ago I lost two coil packs on my wifes DOHC taurus. Water gets in there, steams off and kills the coil packs.

 

This is sad I know but I have no idea what or where the COPS and coil packs are. Can you point me to the general area and maybe a description of what they look like?

Yes on the scanner.

 

COPS is an acronym for Coil On Plug

If you look under the hood, you will notice that there isn't a coil, distibutor and plug leads like on a regualr (old) engine.
The Plugs have the Coils mounted directly on top of them.

 

Wish I had one of the regular old engines about right now....

So COPS and coil packs are the same thing? Try blowing them out first and then try replacing them?

 

The coil paks are flat on their tops. If they develope cracks in the potting material water will short them out. They may dry out, they may not.
The plugs are down inside a well with only the rubber boot to seal out water.
These areas fill with water, you have problems. The boots may dry out and not seal at the top or around the plug.
Owners even get into trouble going thru water puddles at times due to these faults.
Learn what you have before doing these things..

 

So how would you wash it then? Seriously. I cant stand to see my motor dirty.

 

For one thing you have to get use to not doing this very often if you want to stay out of problems. The older the truck gets the worse this will get unless you replace these parts.
I changed plugs, inspected the boots sealed the boots to the plugs and the valve covers with grease, cleaned and inspected the coils.
Then used mild Simple Green cleaner and a low pressure spray off.
Got away with it on a newly sealed and good parts. If I were to do this again in a year, I may not get away with it.
Accept it as it is.

 

What I've done to clean mine is use a pressure washer. Just one of those cheap 'home depot' kind is what I've got. The trick is not to direct the water on top of the engine for any length of time. The other thing is to keep the nozzle about 2 feet away from whatever you are pointing it at. This way, all your engine gets is a 'mist' of water. Enough to rinse away the engine degreaser, but not enough to drown it.

I've done mine several times with no incidents. I do cover the alternator with a plastic bag and like I said, don't spend too much time in any one place. Just kinda 'sweap' the engine bay and let the mist of the sprayer do the rinsing.

BEFORE:



AFTER:

 

I'd say the real trick is to not put excessive, pinpointing pressure on critical areas. I don't think it's necessary to go and cover your alternator or anything else for that matter under the hood with plastic bags, but you do what you want with that. It all gets exposed to water at sometime and is supposedly designed around this obvious circumstance. The problem with the misfires is that the plug is down in a grounded hole (the engine block). The hole fills up with enough water to ground the high voltage circuit to the block, before it can jump the plug gap, resulting in your miss. Unless the cop is damaged with a crack or something to expose the inners of it to water it should be fine after you dry out the holes. Do use dielectric grease to seal up the seating of the cop.

BTW, the "older" motors with distributers were prone to drowning too. Dry them out and they work again.

 

The only reason I cover the ALT now is that's what I used to do in the old days. I also covered the dist on that old 1971 LTD I had with the 400 in it...

I went thru several ALT on that beast before I started covering them up. Once I did that, my mysterious ALT failures stopped... Just glad I had one of those Schucks ALT and they always replaced it!!

Mitch

 

Well I think I got lucky this time around. Yesterday it was running terrible. Today however I drove it and it seems to be okay. No stumbling or rough idle. I cleared the code and I'll see if anything comes back. That'll be the last time I spray the engine down.

 

They look like this. Like Mitch150 says, you can wash the compartment if your careful. I usually keep my engine running when I do mine.