1996 Mazda Protege Water damage?

D_WUJKOWSKI

MEMBER
1996 MAZDA PROTEGE
4 CYL
2WD
MANUAL
150,000 MILES

I pressured washed the engine making sure I was careful at what I was washing. Now the check engine light came on, the engine is idling lower and it stalls sometimes at idle. I checked the distributor and blew it with a compressor. Checked the air intake for water, checked the oil cap to see if there was a water/oil film on it and there wasnt. The car stalls when the oil cap is taken off and smoke was coming from the catalyc converter after idling for a while the next day, could of been water? Please help

3 Replies

MHPAUTOS

MECHANIC
31,937 POSTS

Hi there,

Water and modern engines don't mix very well, I would get a scan done as there will be set fault code now, report that code back here and we will see where the problem is, start here.

Mark (mhpautos)

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Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 AT 5:33 PM

D_WUJKOWSKI

MEMBER
6 POSTS

Code P0340 Camshaft Position Sensor A-Bank Circuit Malfunction

Code P0100 Mass Air Flow Sensor MAF VAF Circuit Malfunction

I checked the Mass Air Flow Censor for water leaks, it looked fine. I'm not too sure where the sensor for the Camshaft in a protege is yet.

The car will idle low sometimes. Sometimes it wont even start, it will run for 1 second. When it is running it will hesitate when the gas is pressed. At lower speeds, speically in lower gears, the car will jerk when the gas is pressed. Nothing happens when I press the gas then all of a sudden it kicks in which causes the jerking.

I'm going to check out the wiring to and the Cam sensor but any advice on top of that would be great. Thanks

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Saturday, March 7th, 2009 AT 12:12 PM

D_WUJKOWSKI

MEMBER
6 POSTS

So I'm guessing I found the sensor, its in the distributor. I checked the plugs going to the distributor, it seems fine, none of the pins are damaged. The wires are fine from the distributor side.

How would I go about checking and cleaning the actual sensor inside the distributor. It seems I would have to have an L shaped phillips screwdriver to get into the distributor, since the screws inward. One screw is even under the the plug which runs from the distributor, curves and then runs parallel. Thanks

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Saturday, March 7th, 2009 AT 3:12 PM