Used Mahindra Scorpio emitting white smoke after getting washed

The 'check engine light' also came on & the car started to lose power.

BHPian Nishith recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Hello everyone,

Posting this on behalf of my cousin.

He recently purchased a pre-owned Mahindra Scorpio 4X4 AT. He was enjoying the car thoroughly and even completed a 2,200 KM road trip a couple of weeks back covering the northern part of Karnataka and the vehicle performed flawlessly.

Everything was perfect till yesterday noon when he had left the car for a wash at a car wash center nearby and the car wash guys have used a pressure washer on the engine bay (the usual process that is followed at the car washes) and this what we suspect as a starting point for all the problems that follow.

Post wash, the car was brought home and it was all fine. After an hour or so he took the car to head out, the car started up with an engine check light. Since the car had just come from a wash he assumed that maybe the water was playing its trick on some sensor and chose to ignore it and continue his journey.

After around 1KM from his home with the check-engine light blinking the car started to lose power, went into limp mode and he noticed that the car was emitting white smoke from the exhaust when slotted to Drive mode.

As he had to attend to something, he parked the car on the roadside and continued his journey in another car. Meanwhile, he got in touch with Mahindra RSA and started to enquire about the towing charges from BEL road, Bangalore to PPS Mahindra showroom, Yelahanka, Bangalore.

Chose PPS Mahindra, Thanisandra as I give my XUV500 for service in this service center and found them to be very helpful. Parallelly I spoke to my service advisor at PPS Mahindra and took his opinion, he suggested not to drive the car and get it towed to the showroom on a flatbed. Post this we confirmed with Mahindra RSA we would need the flatbed service and the tow truck was sent to our location within 20 min (Kudos to the Mahindra team for their prompt and quick response).

Once the car was on the flatbed and reached PPS Mahindra, post offloading we were asked to park the car a little closer to the wall and to our surprise the car was no-more in limp mode and the pick-up was back to normal.

However, the check engine light and white smoke emission still continued. Hence, we choose to leave the car in the service center and get it checked. The car is currently at PPS Mahindra showroom.

We are now waiting for the car to be checked and posting this incident on this forum seeking guidance from the experts here to understand what could be the problem and hoping there is nothing major (fingers crossed).

Any directions provided in this use case would be extremely helpful.

Here's what BHPian skb1811 had to say about the matter:

I'm guessing water entered the engine intake when it was being pressure washed? That would explain the white smoke coming from the exhaust and the check engine light.

Probably need to flush the engine cylinders empty by removing the spark plugs and cranking it. Good that you didn't drive it much after the wash as it would've caused more damage to the engine internals.

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.