How to Clean a Dirty Engine Bay in 30 minutes

[Guzic]

This will be a quick guide on how to clean MOST of a dirty engine bay with minimal effort.
Greater results will be had depending on how nit picky you decide to be.

This whole process only took me 20-30 minutes and that was with me taking my time. The engine bay had a lot of caked on dirt and grime so it required a bit of work.

If your engine is dirtier than this, a little more elbow grease might be required. Converseley, if your engine bay just has a bit of ligth dust, a quick wipe down with a bit of All Purpose Cleaner will be all you need. Knowing what to do will yield you good results regardless.

Products I used:

Stay Fresh Acid Degreaser - Great for tough to remove oil stains.
My own mixture of All Purpose Cleaner - General cleaning all around
Stay Fresh Back to Black - Restores faded trim back to a nice lustering black
A couple of MF and terry cloth towels
Variety of special brushes
Detailing gloves to keep my hands soft


Here is what I had to work with. I was only ordered to do a quick cleaning of the upper surface of the engine bay. This is not a perfect cleaning by any means. The main objective was to make the surface look as clean as possible.

Notice all the caked on dirt and oil stains all around











Step 1:
First thing I like to personally do is do a quick wipe down with either a microfiber or terry cloth towel to remove all loose surface dust. This will help you in the long run as you won't have nearly as much dust mixing with liquid. It will also help you accurately measure which areas you will need to concentrate more so than others. And most importantly, it will help to keep your cleaning instruments a lot cleaner as well.


Step 2:
Once you have all lose dirt removed, analyze which areas will need a more concentrated product. if you have a lot of oil stains then start with an acid degreaser such as Stay Fresh's. it is strong enough to remove most stains without harming engine components. "softer" stains or mildy stubborn dirt will only require an all purpose Cleaner.

Spray whichever product you are using into the area you are working on and let is sit for a few seconds. This will help soften the dirt up, thus making it easier to remove. The main key here to really get a clean surface is to agitate the dirt and grime. You can use a soft but firm bristle brush to agitate the dirt and break it away from the surface. Without agitating the dirt, you will find that a lot of it gets left behind since it has bonded to the surface, thus taking longer to clean while demanding more effort.

After you have successfully agitated the grime from the surface, use a cloth of your choice to wipe the area clean.

Do this to your entire engine bay, it really should not take long unless you are doing a DEEP DEEP cleaning and are being really meticulous.

The bay should end up A lot cleaner than if you had just done a quick spray and wipe.

Here are some after Photos. Like I said, I was only ordered to clean the surface and did not go much deeper.





Step 3:

This step is optional. But if you have dull trim/ engine parts are fading, then apply a back to black product. I used Stay Fresh's Back to Black since I am a fan of how well it restores trim. It is also durable enough to survive the 100+ degree here in vegas.

Here is a quick 50/50 shot of it in action.


Like always any questions are welcomed
Let me know if there is anything specific to detailing you guys want me to do a write up on.