Hi Fellas

I took the truck (2003 1500 4.7L V8) to the car wash this afternoon for a cleaning to include the engine bay. I've done this before, but this time the engine seems to idle roughly and has a bit less power, and what's more the engine seems to have a much louder "growl" especially during acceleration (which actually sounds kinda' cool!).

Could this simply be moisture in the fuel lines or electrical? should it eventually just dry out and normalize? Might a cylinder not be firing? (How would THAT be corrected?)

Any ideas? Thanks for any suggestions.

 

Make that water is never sprayed into the alternator. It will fry it 50% of the time

 

Generally using a pressure washer on an engine is a bad idea. Most electrical connections are provisioned for moisture resistance, however pressurized water can and will be forced where it's not wanted.

 

You can also get water down in the spark plug chambers and short the coils out. It happened to mine, luckily I was quick enough to look at that and dried them off and replaced the plugs and all was good after that.

 

Thanks, fellas. I had it on the road again today and it seems to be running much better again, so I guess the alternator is ok (I kept an eye on voltage continually and it seems normal). Just some bumps when idling, but nothing like yesterday. But in any event, because of this incident and your help, I have a much better understanding of the threats that is posed to the alternator, plugs and electrical connections. I'll have to consider another way to clean it next time.

In the meantime, guess I'll go ahead and change the plugs anyway.

Thanks again, guys.