Tb311

Well theres this car wash place near my house that offers engine steaming and I was wondering if this would be safe for our cars? Has anyone ever done it before?

gilwong

Steaming is not a good idea because of all the electrics and sensors in the engine bay.

Mongo

I looked at a car that had its engine steamed. The car backfired on startup! The cap and rotor were all wet when I pulled it in front of the car salesman. *idiots*

Tb311

Ok thanks for the input. Looks like its off to the store to buy some engine degreaser and some elbow grease

phil0618

Hi,

Try some Simple Green. Spray it on. Wait a few minutes and then hose it off. Save the degreaser for the really hard stuff.

Phil

Tb311

Ok, so what should I not spray? I know I shouldnt spray the electrical stuff like the distributor, but what about mechanical parts? Are there any holes or parts I should cover up?

Epic2112

I hose my engine off all the time, and I never bother to cover anything. I probably should, but I have never had any problems.

Just don't use a powerful stream. Try some Simple Green like Phil suggested, then mist until it's all off. I use a paintbrush to help it out a bit, but I rarely need to do any hard scrubbing.

MoonBoy

Everybody knows these cars engines are dry-clean-only.

Porsche-O-Phile

Some people have had very bad luck with steaming (Iceshark comes to mind) and others not at all. I've pressure-blasted mine a couple of times after letting it sit for a while to cool off and deliberately avoiding the distributor area. It works reasonably well and can be useful for getting a lot of the crud and glop off of the fenderwells and other places. Probably the BEST thing is to use Simple Green as has been mentioned. The purple stuff (Greased Lightning I think it's called) works pretty well too but tends to leave a whitish "stripped" look to all the metal. Hitting it with WD-40 afterwards (yes, really) and then hosing (makes a horrible mess on the ground though) works too.

IMB951

When I detailed my engine bay,
First step was to cover up distributor with a thick rag, then I took my garden hose with the "mist" attachment and wet it down a little, then used Gunk brand engine cleaner all over everywhere and let it sit for 10-15 min, then use the mist spray to lightly hose away all the grime and using higher pressure in the tough spots. The only complaint I have about Gunk cleaner is that it's a wee bit too strong for the plastic & rubber parts, but I went back and hit them all with Vinylex and a toothbrush to get em lookin better. For all metal parts I used 3M Crome & Metal polish with a rag and some elbow grease. Then went back shot compressed air in every crack and crevice and did a final wipedown of everything with mild Simple Green cleaner.

Turns out nice!

painkiller

Ok, I did not come up with this - it was posted a few months ago. There is this little steamer called Scunci (sp) that comes with different attachments for cleaning showers, ovens, etc. There are infomercials on it and I picked up mine at Walgreens. Pre-treat with simple green or citrus degreaser and hit it with the steam. After a couple of treatments/steaming/scrubbing the ps pump/cooler, oil pan/cooler, rack, a-arms, trailing arms etc look great. It comes with a couple of brush ends (nylon and brass) that help too. The nozzle is pretty small so you can avoid any moisture sensitive areas.

I told the wife it was for the kitchen and it has not been out of the garage since I got it.

John

Clowd

I cleaned my entire engine with a pressure washer when I first got the car.. no problems at all, I didn't cover up or avoid anything.. dumb thing to do I suppose but I guess I got lucky.

IceShark

Yeah, I had a real nightmare when I cleaned out the engine bay. The motor initially started up fine but then electrical disaster struck. I now have almost all new sensors, new dist, rotor and plug wires. And a few new relays. I don't know how everything could go so fast but it all happened at once like I got struck by some alien spaceship death beam. I'm never doing that again.

You do want to cover up the hole on the top of the bellhousing the reference and speed senors are in/next to. Besides maybe getting grease on the clutch disk you may wash the grease off the drive shaft splines the disk slides back and forth on. Then you have a clutch that won't fully disengage and you are looking at a clutch job. That is not a minor Saturday afternoon project!!!! Having done mine last December, trust me, I don't want to do that again anytime soon. Just search the archives for all the horror stories as a 944/51 has to be one of the most labor intensive clutch changes on the planet. One Rennlister, Danno N., advocates that pulling the whole engine out is the easiest way to change the clutch rather than dropping the rear of the drive train. I think that pretty much lays out how much work is involved.

gilwong

If you want to go at it with a water hose, use plastic freezer bags and elastic bands to cover key electrical components. Covering the bellhousing hole is a good idea. If you have a K&N cone filter, cover that as well. I actually have had my car stall twice coming out of an automatic carwash which shoots water from beneath the car to clean the undercarriage. I'm pretty sure it had to do with the cone filter/MAF setup.