[AJohn]

Greetings to everybody,

I just registered a few minutes ago to enlighten myself regarding proper care of my car.
I had an engine wash the other day and I am experiencing a sort of abnormal engine performance. I carefully watch the personnel who did the job and he did cover the parts that would require such action. Is there any proper procedure or any literature that I can make use of as personal reference to really find out if the procedure being done on my car engine is correct or at least acceptable?

[Fr_Chuck]

Moved from forum helps,

Sorry no idea of an answer I merely moved this to the correct forum so you can get proper help, I just hose mine down, never covered anything and have never had a problem, so I am of no help.

[KISS]

I usually just hose, wash and hose again the engine compartment down while the engine is running or use a self-serve ca wash.

Typical issues that showed up on old vehicles were irratic idle, which can be an indication of bad plug wires. Another issue was getting water in the distributor cap. Cars don't have distributers now. You need to avoid getting water in the air cleaner.

I'm a believer that an engine bath exposes problems that might occur later.

I let the engine idle for a while or take afterwards to get everything dry.

[tweedg]

What kind of vehicle is it? Some new cars have ignition coils right on the spark plug. If those get too wet then it could have fouled one of them. We see this on Ford vehicles at my detail shop on occasion. Go to your local auto zone and they can tell you which coil is bad. They are easy to replace.

[TxGreaseMonkey]

Engine washing is a major source of coil-on-plug failure, alternators shorting out, and sensor and ECM troubles. There have been some real disasters on this site. In my opinion, it's very risky on modern-day cars. I would spot clean by hand.