Help! Power washed my 93 vert engine. Now it looses power at 2K RPM

[RedMetroJet]

Here is the story:

On Saturday, my son and I changed the oil on my Red 93 Metro Vert. All went fine, but one of us forgot to put the Oil cap back on (Perhaps we should not work on 3 different cars at once, but, that is another story).

Monday, drove to work, about 5 miles from home, I realized the car was smoking. Pulled over, opened hood to discover oil everywhere and no cap.
Checked the oil, down about a half a quart, so I plugged it with a rag and went home. Found the cap on the way, just out of the driveway. Put the cap on and got the oil back to 100%. Drove a different car to work.

Last night, I went to a nearby car wash and power washed the engine to get the oil off it and the rest of the car. Left it running while I did this as is my normal practice so there are no tem extreams on the engine. Car continued to idle the entire time. However, when I pulled out after the wash, it sputtered and died. Did not want to start back up. Parked the car and went into Walmart to do a little shopping. Car started right up after sitting 30 minutes, however, it would not run past 2000 RPMs, just boggs out.

Made it home at <35 MPG, pushing the shifting all the way, starting in second and running mostly in 5th.

This morning, the car started fine and took off like normal, however, after about a mile, it started again.

I have checked the vacuem line and don't see anything off. everything looks dry. Any ide where I start from here?

[RossT]

1st remove the dist. cap and let things dry out. You can also take a hair dryer on low to help dry things

[RedMetroJet]

Thanks for the guidance. Fortunately for me, a sunny September day did the trick for me. Went out to work on the car last night and when I checked to see if the problem still existed, she ran like a champ. Next time I'll be more careful and cover the distributer.

[Uvgotbob]

Thank You!!!!!!! I had the very same problem, symptoms, and everything! Dried out the distributor and fixed it!

I've been my own mechanic since I was 15, never professionally though, and have fixed, replaced, or rebuilt almost every single component of a car. This includes all the electrical and electronic components too. I've experienced many wet ignition problems over the years, (I'm 60 now), and consider myself very capable at diagnosing and repairing them but this one with my little Metro really puzzled me. I hadn't yet trouble shot the problem...only thought about it a little and browsed this forum a bit, but a wet distributor never entered my mind since it worked fine in open loop mode, (first mile after cold start), only to fail with no power at 2k rpms. At wet distributor usually either won't fire or misfires under load, etc. After a little thought, it occured to me that since on this model, the distributor also acts as cam sensor for the ECM, it must be that even though it could trigger the coil, it couldn't provide a clean signal to the ECM above 2k rpms once it went into closed loop operation. I'm sure this would not have fooled a pro but I am none the less surprized at this kind of symptom for a wet distributor.

Thanks again, your thread saved me a lot of time!

Bob Rowland