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Washing Your Engine Bay

Rav

By Rav,
in Victoria

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bluey33 Experienced

bluey33

Posted
Posted

I personally go over the whole engine bay by hand with a rag, using degreaser and WD40 then getting the air compressor onto it. It takes a while but it comes up a hell of a lot better. Then I have the piece of mind of not worrying about water getting onto starter motor or any electrical wiring for that matter.

Normally takes me 1-2 hours. Which includes taking pod off, crossover pipe and I even get under the car and give it a good clean.

krzysiu Grand Master

krzysiu

Posted
Posted
I personally go over the whole engine bay by hand with a rag, using degreaser and WD40 then getting the air compressor onto it. It takes a while but it comes up a hell of a lot better. Then I have the piece of mind of not worrying about water getting onto starter motor or any electrical wiring for that matter.

Normally takes me 1-2 hours. Which includes taking pod off, crossover pipe and I even get under the car and give it a good clean.

agree with this method. NEVER spray water in your engine bay using a hose or high pressure system

bluey33 Experienced

bluey33

Posted
Posted

Also never spray degreaser on and start car up without using compressor or rag on it, i know someone who has set their engine bay up in flames doing this (lucky he had fire extinguisher on him). Just take your time and the results will come.

foznice Veteran

foznice

Posted
Posted

I've done this quite a few times now. THe first time I just used degreaser and a rag and got most of the dirt off. But there was so much there. So, I took the coilpack cover off, packed it with absorbent towl stuff, then put it back on and blocked off everything important. Then I sprayed degreaser everywhere, and let if sit for while so that it really started cleaning up... Then I sprayed it off with a hose. I wasn't too keen on using a water compressor though just because of the electrics.

Since then i've pretty much done all that, except I didn't have to do it 2 or 3 times (degrease, rinse, degrease, rinse) because there isn't THAT much dirt.

Aftwards if you want a really nice shine (and smell...) then spray 'inox' on stuff (especially rubber things) and it gives it all a real nice glow. It only really lasts a couple of weeks though, so I wouldn't really bother unless you were going to a show and shine or something....

Hardman69 Collaborator

Hardman69

Posted
Posted

A few weeks ago, I sprayed a whole can of degreaser over everything enginey & dirty-lookin, and 5mins later sprayed it off at the car wash with "High pressure wash" - and then dawdled home to dry it out with the air compressor, then spray a mist of turps over/around the CoilPacks with the parts washer air-gun.

It wasn't enough - turns out there was still water sitting beneath the coil packs, where the compressed air couldn't blast it out. Sure enough, the legendary RB25DET weak-spark misfire came back . . . . so out with the coil packs, dried it properly, in with the WD-40 & RP-7, put it back together again. Mis-Fire gone.

so - moral of this story: Water tends to find the lowest part of your cam-valley . . . around the spark plugs !

Mavric Grand Master

Mavric

Posted
Posted

You can get away with doing it with high pressure...

I would normally attack the engine bay with high pressure but again avoiding belts depending on the temp of the day...

If its a warmer day water is ok and will make no difference as it will just dry...(im talking summer)

As Adz has said lower parts of the car for sure... we all do an oil change and drip drip... thats when i would get a degrease onto it hard and then blast it to hell...

last time i did mine i actually got under the car and did it all by hand took ages!!!

I have had my engine bay looking like the bellow pic once, but tell you want it was a lot of work..

post-11799-1185235737_thumb.jpg

That pic was done all by hand and with no high pressure at all... as you can tell you can get an awesome effect if you spend the time on it...

ak_stylez Community Regular

ak_stylez

Posted
Posted

i cleaned my engine bay with the degreaser and highpressure water both from the carwash. didn't really do all that much, but the water had no adverse affects at all.

i've got a series 2 though, so starter motor is down with the ecu (right?), and i covered the snorkle and a few other little bits with plastic bags.

next time i might try a canned degreaser.

skybarge Community Regular

skybarge

Posted
Posted

yeah I'm down with the others and the high pressure clean

basically make sure it's a nice hot day, open your bonnet,

get your air compressor out, set to round 80-100psi, usually they come with a degreasing gun, put half water half degreaser into it, then use the nozzle to clean the engine bay, then let it sit for a few hours drying out, then use silicone spray on the engine/pipes

makes it look nice :thumbsup: and doesn't dry out or crack, that's what most car yards do as well, so if you are unsure, goto a car yard and ask to watch someone detail an engine bay :thumbsup:

or just take your car there, pay the money and get the interior, exterior and engine bay done at the same time, it won't be cheap though

anticeptik Collaborator

anticeptik

Posted
Posted

Nice Plenum man :action-smiley-069:

As for washing with a high pressure hose or something my mate didnt use common sense and poped his igniter.

ive also been told you can ware out the loom casing after a while of high pressure rinsing, cant confirm that though.

I use both, high pressure for like the chasis and clean off the rest with a rag and degreasor

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