Engine Cleaning

Today's Topic deals with cleaning your engine.
Most people don't clean their engine often and its a shame, a properly cleaned engine is a thing of beauty. Even if your engine is bone stock it will still look better with a fresh coat of clean. There are a couple of ways you can clean your engine, one of the easiest is at a DIY power wash.

Disclaimer Attempt at your own risk, I have performed this walk through multiple times, but things can always go wrong.

In my experience you can spray down your engine just fine without any trouble, I would avoid spraying the ECU of Battery but these things get wet when it rains so a little water wont help them. You can use the foaming cleaner and then spray rinse that most DIY spray car washes offer and that's it, you may need to apply a little silicon to your hood latch and actuators to keep them from sticking.

A better way is to gather the following:

• Simple Green
• Hose with spray attachment
• Q-tips
• Turtle Wax Tire Foam and Shine
• Sea foam spray
• Old rags

I have found this works best if the car has not been run recently, a hot engine dries up the cleaner to fast before you can rinse it off.

1. The first step is to spray down the exterior of your car, this will keep the simple green from taking the wax off your paint. Now pop open the hood.
2. Spray down the entire engine with a generous coat of Simple Green, Avoid hitting the serpentine belt, battery and ECU directly. If some splashes on them don't worry.
3. Now take the rags and q-tip and wipe down every inch, be sure to get the grime off the tops of the fluid canisters (for example the oil symbol on top of the oil add location) this will make your car really POP.
4. Use the rages to wipe off the inside of the hood, not forgetting the actuators, the hood latch, and pretty much any part of the engine that is dirty.
5. Now rinse it all off with the spray hose, again avoid hitting avoid hitting the serpentine belt, battery and ECU directly. You may see some spots you missed, clean them again.
6. Let you car dry, the next step will work best on a dry engine, you can get out more rags and pat down the engine to speed this up.
7. Spray the engine with a tire foam spray, avoid hitting the serpentine belt, battery and ECU directly. Take a rag and spray it with the tire foam spray, wipe down the battery and ECU. BE CAREFUL NOT TO LET THE RAG TOUCH THE NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE TERMINALS AT THE SAME TIME!!!!
8. Turn your car on, your serpentine belt is probably squeaking, spray it down with some sea foam spray, now its clean, lubricated, and silent.
9. That's it, sit back and enjoy your engine!