Cleaning your Engine

[BZG Wagon]

Something seems inheriently wrong with using a hose & some degreaser to clean your engine (given the amount of electrical & rubber stuff under the bonnet)...

Anyone here regularly clean their engine? Any tips? Is it as easy as spraying on the degreaser & hosing it off?

[Snaps]

I personally wouldn't get water anywhere near my engine, that's just asking for trouble, I'd just use engine de-greaser, a toothbrush, some elbow grease and an old towel or something to clean it off afterwards.

Edit: Just note: I've never really cleaned my engine bay but I was just using common sense in the above post

[Emperor]

my trick -

plastic bag over pod (or dont need to if stock intake)
saturate engine in degreaser (citrus ozone safe shit)
toothbrush hard areas
spray off with hose
crc / silicone to dry up water around plugs etc

[Dell'Orto]

+1, provided you cover coils or dizzys with a bag, its fine. Just dont blast water directly on them.

[Emperor]

+1, provided you cover coils or dizzys with a bag, its fine. Just dont blast water directly on them.

yeah try to cover any major electrical.
also if your BOV faces up, dont spray it like my mate did, and made a pool of water on it haha

[AE92blktop]

took my mates oiley greasey car down to one of those self serve car cleaning places, bagged the electrics, soaked the engine with kero and let rip with the steam cleaner. No problems either and you dont leave a mess on your drive though it could be a big walk if it wont start.

[johndoe1025]

i got the coil wet cleaning my engine bay, couldnt figure out why my car died after farting for a coupla mins and missing and doing all sortsa weird shit, then it wouldn't start, tried to push start it down the road, no go, had 2 tow it bak then hada look round the engine bay, say the water int he plug haha blew it out and awayt she went again

[Mr Revhead]

lol i filled the TPS plug with water in my s/c aw11
took two days to figure it out

[Mad Murphy]

Washed the MR2's engine once and it ran fine… for half an hour or so when I was nearly to Lyttleton and then decided to run on 3 cylinders. Great fun driving home, I don't think I've ever driven anything slower. One time my cousin sprayed degreaser on my Coronas engine too and set the thing on fire, great laugh having to push it up to the waterblaster at the wash place then fumble for coins to make it run to put it out.

[rollaholic]

above post is rofls.

the grooming place up the road from us calls at least once a month to get cars started that 'mysteriously wont go' after a groom

[Jenn]

As long as you dont blast the obvious electrics using a hose its ok, and be careful about loose cam covers cos the tensioner bearings arent to happy about water. i wash plenty of motors at Toyota, we never have any problems. Everyone Just be warned aw11s dont like hoses lol

[d1 mule]

as long as your not a complete muppet and have a drop of commonsense with the water blaster you wont have any problems. iv washed many an engine with none of the above mentioned precautions, and all have been sweet

[Jonno2002]

i used to work in the wash bay of a car groomers, ive water blaster 100's of engines and only a select few had problems, usually the older ones with worn dissy seals and other misc seals, the newer cars with even more electric bs seemed fine.

oh and jenn, aw11's dont seem to like anything lol they just break.... my mates had 3 of them and they all had issues

[Bling]

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Community/Mess ... d=31360860

[UZZ30]

Get can of WD40, spray it on the entire engine bay, you dont need to use all of it just enough to cover it and get in the gaps where dirt/grease collects.

Cover up any electrical parts that could be harmed & the intake.

Let it sit of 5 minutes or so.

Mist spray water over it to run all the WD40 off, it will go milky. I do that for a couple of minutes.

Wipe it all down with some rags to clean and dry it.

Results are to die for, then get some silicone spray or what ever to make it look even cleaner, but don't go OTT so it gets caked in it.

I've done that on all 7 cars Ive owned and it works and looks great every time.

Example on my Legend I cleaned the other day.

Dirty-ish



Cleaned with WD40, water and wiped down (with out silicone spray)

[strx7]

if you take the car for a drive first, so the engine itself is hot/warm before you start adding water to the equation, you'll get on better. As some water will evaporate from hard to reach places.

I feel sorry for the above guy with a legend. a honda specialist once said to me, the only improvement they could have made to legends was to paint them all lemon yellow.

[pjay]

lol i was going to post "but its still alegend"

[pc]

I leave the engine running while cleaning the engine bay, warm engine evaporates the water quicker... and if it stops running I know to look at the last place that I was spraying the hose.

[Outlander]

I was always told that as long as you don't be a douche and steam clean the obvious electrical its fine to steam clean or hose down an engine bay. They say to bag the electronics and stuff because steam cleaning forces water down into the connectors and gaps causing shorts and all sorts of bad juju.

I hosed mine down the other week after losing a rocker cover gasket(rather horribly i might add) and attempting to correct the resulting mess. It was fine, i just threw a plastic bag over the battery,starter,alternator etc and gently hosed the stuff off, and on a few occasions when i first started out id be flushing a cooling system via the heater core and be dousing the engine bay with water unknowingly lol.

Hosing seems to be fine as long as its not being forced into areas under pressure.

[Adamal]

CRC 5.56 on electrical plugs etc afterwards. Its non conductive and displaces water.