I do not like to use water to clean my engines - they are clean but not spotless. IMHO, there are too many expensive doodads under the hood to spray water all over the place.
If you do a search, you will find many postings about 850s running poorly after an engine wash. You will also find many posts from people who wash their engines with water. The cover on top of your engine is just a plastic cover for the spark plugs and the plug wires, and it has no gasket - water goes right under it.
With each of my cars, I removed this plastic cover and cleaned the area under it with kerosene and a rag or cotton swab where necesary. I pulled the plug wires from their sockets, and examined the plug wells, one of my cars had three plug wells that had what looked like a rusty deposit in them. These wells are very hard to clean. When I put the cover screws back, I put never-sieze on them.
I clean the metal parts of the engine with paint thinner, and the rubber parts with WD-40. I save all the old socks in our household and weekly, when I check my tires and fluids, I use one to wipe dirt from areas in the engine compartment, wiping the battery last. I can reach into small areas with the sock on my hand. I wax all painted parts and areas under the hood with non-cleaner wax(No white deposits), even so, the solvents in the wax do clean some soil off.
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3 8s & 2 7s 740,000 miles total
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