Oil all over a car engine - bad?

[Anglepoise]

Can't see if there's anywhere more sensible to put this ... We've just opened the bonnet of the car to find that the oil cap is missing and there is consequently no oil in the car but quite a lot all over the engine We suspect that the garage left it off last time it went for a service (er, quite a long time ago ), which is rather annoying.

Anyway, someone has just told us that we need to hose it off or our car is likely to burst into flames ... Is this true?

I should think that is unlikely - afterall you will have been driving around for a while without the oilcap. Had a similar thing with my car - we forgot to put the cap back on!

Yeah, that's what I thought - it has been literally months and months and months

I'm such a muppet!

Oil is flameable especially with the mix of air flow when your driving along, being preheated by the engine if you're on the move and if you get the bad luck a spark i.e. a cigarette gets thrown from another car. Worth giving it a quick pressure wash for that just in case possibility.

Silly question but you have topped the oil back up haven't you - you'll be into serious engine damage otherwise.

Yeah, we've topped it up a bit and will top it up some more once we've managed to get a replacement cap tomorrow. I have already destroyed one car engine by never filling the oil (faulty oil light) so I have previous!

This happened to us, but it was DH fault - not the garage - and the police stopped us on the motorway with all the black smoke we hadn't noticed!
The kids were hysterical when the police took them and me to the nearest services (thought DH was being arrested!) but they seemed to think it should burn off OK. So I bet yours will too.

I mean, not dangerously - sort of evaporate?