Just spent half the afternoon stressing about serious misfires on this E36 lump that's been sitting unused in my driveway all winter. "Ran when parked." Saw some steam shooting out of the cyl #3 spark plug hole and feared the worst, but when I pulled all of the coils there was standing water in 4 out of the 6 spark plug holes. Where's it come from? Rain. That "cosmetic" plastic cover that never made it back onto the engine is apparently an integral part of the environmental control system.
/rant
In reply to Vigo:
Negative. Reading the forums, there's several ways water can get past the cowl and drip onto the head. In my case, it was probably all the leaves and crap that had collected there preventing the weatherstripping from making a good seal.
Anyway, the forums have no kind words for people who remove that plastic cover.
Did the same thing after cleaning the engine in my miata. Don't feel bad.
same thing happened with my aw11 mr2 after pressure washing the engine, after drying up the water in the spark plug valley it was back to normal
On my e34 525, with the cover on and all weather striping intact, water still occasionally got into the wells of #4 and #5.
The 4.6 in the P71 will do that if you clean the engine.
SHO 3.0 does the same thing... unplug the coils and let the water dry. In my experience, it'll be ok after that.
Wait until you realize it shorted some of the coils and they are going to intermittently fail shortly if they work at all!
