Please don’t powerwash your engine…

If you have a modern car and like a tidy engine bay, wipe it down by hand.  We had this SVT Cobra return after service (plugs were changed) with a check engine light and a miss in the engine. After popping checking for a faulty coil pack, we realized something was amiss.

See that glint of light at the 12 o’clock above the spark plug?  That is water reflecting the light.  It is very hard to shoot a picture inside one of these holes but here you can see that the water is nearly over the top of the plug.  The DTC was a miss isolated to this cylinder.  All of the cylinders had some water in them, but this one was the worst.  After water was removed and DTC was cleared the car ran like a champ again.  These are coil packs under a cover and bolted to the head, so this does take a touch of time to get to.