SHO running rich....no power

[Tommy's SHO]

Hey guys, I'm having an issue with the SHO.

Last month i washed the engine with some simple green and rinsed it off with water. I then had a problem with it firing all of it's cylinders. My fault as I used to much water to rinse the engine off which in turn filled the spark plug tubes with water. I sucked out the water and cleaned the tubes. I left the car to dry out for a week and then went back to it and still had problems with it. Took it on the highway running on 5 cylinders and whatever was wet dried off and then the car was running like it suppose to. Continued to use the car for the rest of that week with no issues.

Fast forward to today, I started the car up after sitting for almost two weeks and started right up. Took it out on the highway merged nicely and then loss of power....engine is stumbling.....tach is @ 600 rpm and stuck there. It sounded like the car was in limp mode. My dash lights were out clock/EATC and all the lights on the instrument cluster were lit. Pulled over off the highway and the engine was struggling to run. I shut her off.....big mistake as i couldn't restart her because when i tried to it sounded like she had a dead battery. Checked out the batt voltage and it read 8.5 volts. hmmmm weird. I disconnected the battery from the car and it read 11.5 volts....ok so i reconnected it and it still read 11.5 volts WTF? Tried to start it and it wouldn't as the battery did not have enough power to start it. Finally a nice guy pulled over and gave me a boost and it started right up, ran like it was suppose too. Thanked the guy and i was off. After 10 seconds of driving, it all started again. engine bogging, tach not working, no lights, WTF? I drove the car home as it was doing this slowly and when i got home I disconnected the battery.....The car was running rich because my tailpipes have black soot all around them. I'm annoyed at myself because I most likely destroyed the catalytic converters by doing this but....that another issue.

Could a bad battery do this? What should i check for? It's a '95 with 108k miles.

 

[techi14]

maybe u fried your alternator when you got it wet.? DIS wet?

 

[shobote]

May have fouled the plugs when you ran it after the water; pull and see if they are covered in black stuff / smell like unburnt gas. I would never take a hose to the engine compartment since water gets into places and then sits, where it causes oxidation; not good for electrical connections.

 

[itwonder]

You have a bad alternator. The car runs fine until the battery voltage gets too low. When you disconnected the battery, it recovered on its own to a higher voltage, something lead acid batteries do, but it had no current capacity. When you got a jump start, the battery was charged by the jump just enough for it to run for a little while. You can check the voltage at the battery when the motor is running. Should be about 14.5 volts. If it is below 13 volts, the system is not charging. Take the alternator to a parts store and have it tested.

 

[Phoenix]

I would slam a new batt (or your other car's batt) and see what happens , if it clears the issues , make sure your alt is charging (14.4V @ idle).

Its a wierd one though...