The '96 MFI 460 I just bought looks like it never got a bath in all its 76,000 miles.

I've pressure washed older motors/engine compartments at the $2.00 car wash successfully by protecting the carb & distributer with plastic bags & being careful not to hit vital areas full blast.

But this motor has me a little worried.
Will my computer controlled, multiport fuel injected motor be O.K.
at the car wash?
What steps should I take to make sure?

 

The main computer harness connection is under your master cylinder/booster & most of your electronics/relays/fuses is on the left so be careful over there. The foil covering on the heater/AC box is tender with age & you can blast it into pieces too with a high pressure hose.

I wrap most of the major harness plugs with saran wrap and cover with foil then don't direct Hi Press water at them. Another thing I do is don't try to blast everything clean in one try. Stick with cleaning the lower sides, front & back of the engine & firewall with HP & chemicals where things get the nastiest. After you make sure you haven't killed it or caused any problems, come back with a dribbling garden hose, lots of rags and something like Castrol Superclean or Simple Green to do the upper parts of the engine and fender tops by hand. Don't mess with the interior of you throttle body. Regardless of how dirty it might be, you don't want to court problems.

Be careful with your vac lines. Especially the those that are uncovered. They are very heat/UV sensitive and will crack & crumble at this age causing massive problems. You might want to run the codes before & after cleaning just to make sure nothing crops up as a result of your cleaning.

Good luck.

 

Thanks Scndsin, Great idea about checking the codes before & after.
knowing me, I'm gonna screw something up.

Can you (or anyone else) tell me what that unplugged canister on the passenger side of the engine in the pictures is? & what it's suppose to be connected to.?
Definitely want to get that all buttoned up before I submerge it in water.

 

That's the muffler to your air injection pump intake. It stays open just the way it is. For what its worth, one of the first things you might want to replace is that bat cable with a stock unit. Bad grounds are another bane to this vintage.

 

Yeah, new cables are high up on a long list of things I need to do to this truck.

& thanks for the air pump muffler info... Sure looks like there's something missing.
Never, would have ever guessed the air pump intake needed a muffler.

 

The small canister on the larger one is the exhaust... nothing is supposed to be hooked up to the other side of it.