Engine bay cleaning

[wildfire]

I want to clean up my engine bay, but I don't know what to use. It's mostly just baked in dirt, but there's a bit of oil too(put an STP oil treatment in and forgot to put the cap back on ). Any suggestions or tips? I just put in an intake and a strutbar they're making the engine bay look even worse...

[Neon]

Automotive Simple Green and hose the dirt down.

[xrs22]

Get like a scrubber, don't be afraid to get dirty.

[brungold]

simple green automotice and a garden hose. works great!
first time application you may want to go to a pressure wash place if its really that bad.
cover the starter, alt, intake and battery, of course!

do a search and you'll find more info

here's an old pic of mine after its first cleaning:

[terrastrife]

and if you have nfi what theyre on about.. get degreaser. itll like $2 a can at most and will do an engin bay 2-3 times.

[timbo]

^ yah, good ol super cheap auto!

[lucanhookup]

yea do everything they are telling u thats the way to do it i also recomend to get it clean with a pressure machine all u need to cover is were all the spark plugs meet i think u call it the distributor my dad cleans engines all the time he uses a product called mean green they sell mean green at stores but its the cheap kind its mixed with water the one i have is pure mean green no water it works for everything if u got a intake cover it dont worry about covering the battery

[dna59]

I really need to do this on my Cam, with all the dust here my engine bay is nasty.

[a94autoCamry]

Originally Posted by brungold

simple green automotice and a garden hose. works great!
first time application you may want to go to a pressure wash place if its really that bad.
cover the starter, alt, intake and battery, of course!

clean pic there rich, i think that picture was taken by me
anyways remember that time there was this old guy with a gen3 v6...he was washing his engine bay too....so we went over to go check out his car....we looked at the engine and NOTHING was covered....i told him "dont you think you should cover the battery or something at least" ... he replied " no, you dont need too, cuz its a japanese engine"

the guy actually drove off fine after washing his engine bay with nothing covered

[Toysrme]

Steam cleaner. It's the only way to go.

[MR2Jedi]

purple power works good too. and only about $4.00/gal

[mobes]

I've never covered anything while pressure washing, and neither did the detail shop I worked at for a while. The worst thing that ever happened there was water in the distributor cap on an 80's 4-runner. Popped the cap off, wiped it dry, and it started right up.

[wildfire]

Thanks for the help. I've never heard of simple green before, but I'll keep an eye out for it. Is there anything else that needs to be covered besides the alt, starter, etc? And what would you recommend covering them with?

[toyrolla]

At the spray wash booths in PA, they have the option for you to pressure wash your engine.

My only concern in regards to this is hitting the pressure washer on my engine that is already at normal operating temperature.

With the engine at normal operating temp, shouldn't you wait until the engine cools before hitting it with a pressure washer?

[S2B_Blown_3.5]

^^^ yes

I'm going to carry my car to a detail shop to have the engine cleaned, between the oil leak and 200k miles the entire block is covered with an inch of grease and dirt.