I think I got water in my engine.

[pgriffith]

So I was at the car wash today and I popped the hood and sprayed off the engine compartment. Then I started her up to go home and it had a rough idle and when I hit the gas to go there was bad hesitation above 2500 RPM. below 2500 RPM's it was fine. Think I did any damage? Anyway about half way home it seemed to have smoothed out. Think it was just water in the intake or what?

[hockeyman]

Sounds like you had a minor problem, but I'm happy to hear it went away.
I wash my engine down twice every year, but I do suggest that you NEVER spray water on a hot engine! You can do some major damage to it, especially if it's turned off and red-hot. I always let the engine sit for at least 5 hours with the hood up after I'm done driving it before I go washing the engine down. I have a garage, so it's easy for me to do that. If you park it outside, I would suggest letting it sit overnight before you spray water on the engine. After it's washed down, I let it sit for about 1/2 hour then start it up and let it go to operating temp (with the hood still up -lets all the steam out).

Marc

[naptown]

Same thing happened to me about a year ago. I went to the local car wash(MIKES) and got an underbody wash and all of a sudden that sh!t started to happen to me. Also I had just topped off with fuel. Anywhoo it never went away, so I took it to a great local garage and it took 900$ and a whole week to find out what the problem was. It turned out to be cloged up fuel injection.

[pgriffith]

yeah I dont think I will wash it again. It was a good scare.

[Ted]

A little water sucked into the engine can't hurt but if it was serious it probably would start for a while and stall out from the sparkplugs being covered in oil. What probably happened was you washed it down and got a little water by the sparkplugs or something. After you drove it probably burned off and killed the hesitation. I ran over a puddle once and i thought my car was going to die. Turned out that was the problem and it cleared up a mile down the road.