What's the best way to clean your engine and I got so many requests from you guys that this became the most requested
video ever so as usual. I'm going all out in this video
I have a bunch of different vehicles with different engine based setups that are dirty in different ways
Starting with the Driftstang which has a dirty engine that's covered mostly in grease and oil
So we're going to go from this to this and with the Jag(Jaguar) we have the classic Daily driver dirty Engine Bay
That's just dirty from well driving it daily
so here's our before and then
the after and then we have a truck with a dirty engine that's covered in mud which was from driving through a
puddle or two and
this engine is going to go from this to this and
Finally we have a van that's over 20 years old with over
300 thousand miles on her and not only is this engine bay dirty
but we have a bunch of rusted parts that I'm going to show you how to clean up to make this engine look great and
The best part is after watching this video
You're going to be able to super clean any engine and make it look brand new just like you saw using these common products
We have some microfiber towels which you buy in bulk because we're going to be using a lot different brushes
paint markers cleaning wipes spray Wax Trim restore
And Soapy wooder all these products are inexpensive
And I'll be sure to link them in the description below so you could easily find them so let's begin
The engine Bay Super clean process is real simple. Here's the breakdown first
We're going to prepare the engine to get cleaned then we're going to do a dry clean then a wet clean and then we're going
To dry the engine off and then detail it and don't worry
I'm going to explain each step as we go through it and to be sure I answer all the questions that you might have I
even asked you guys on Instagram what you wanted to know about cleaning your engine
So I'll be answering all those questions and more in this video, so let's get started
The first step is the preparation step and although it seems simple
It's important to have all your cleaning supplies laid out
Right next to your engine that's going to make it a lot quicker to clean the engine and a lot more enjoyable because your products
Are going to be right there for you to use it's also a good idea to put on some gloves to protect your hands from
Chemicals and oils and put on some safety glasses just in case some dirt splashes in your face now what you want to do next
Since we're getting the engine wet you want to isolate the power source
Which is the battery by disconnecting it and if your batteries in the engine bay like this
and it's easy to get to
Go ahead and remove it because that's going to make it so much easier to clean this area over here and get to the hard-to-reach
Spaces, but no matter what even if you keep your battery in the car make sure you disconnect the positive and negative leads
So we completely isolate the battery from the rest of the car and the whole point of disconnecting your battery is peace of mind
Everybody's big is concerned when you're cleaning the engine bay getting water in something that you shouldn't and then it shorts out
But with the battery completely disconnected there's no electric running through any of this, so you can't short anything out
There's a lot less to worry about and then when we're done cleaning and detailing the engine
we can make sure everything is dry and then reconnect the battery and we'll be good to go and
finally the last thing for our preparation step even though we
Disconnected the battery there are still some components that we don't want to get wet sure you can get a little wet
But you don't want to get them soaking wet for example. We have the alternator we also have the distributor in this car
We actually have two distributors, but what you want to do is you want to follow your spark plug wires
And this is the electronic distributor if you want you can press down on the caps here
Make sure that they're forced all the way down that helps keep water out, but these are water sensitive following those spark plug wires
We come over to the spark plugs and on this engine the spark plugs are at the top in most cases when the spark plugs
Are at the top you want to be careful because the water could sit in those spark plug wells and when water collects there it
Doesn't easily dry out, and you could have issues when we reconnect the battery so again these components can get splashed with water
But the idea is we don't want to soak them with water if we could help it another engine bay that's becoming a lot more
Common is one that's covered in plastic and usually these plastic covers are protecting whatever you don't want to get wet
So we just want to make sure we don't get water behind the plastic and with that being said
Everything under the hood is designed to get wet
That's why you could drive your car through puddles in the rain without worrying about anything
The only difference is we're going to be spraying water from the top, but we're going to be doing so with a light shower
We're not using a pressure washer and the reason why is these connections,sure they are water tight
but over time with heat cycles with
vibrations these become less and less
Waterproof so we don't want to shoot pressurized water into them even if it doesn't damage the sensor any water that gets in here even
in small amounts will cause corrosion and then over time you'll run into issues and
One last thing we want to be careful of that you don't really think about but you definitely don't want to get water in is
Your engine oil dipstick sometimes it's popped up
So you just want to make sure you push that all the way in so we don't get water in the engine oil
Same thing goes for your brake fluid reservoir. Make sure it's completely tight and your power steering reservoir again
Make sure it's tight and finally if you have an automatic transmission
and a dipstick make sure that dipstick is pushed all the way in and with that we are done with the
Preparation steps, so let's move on to the next step
the next step is to dry clean the engine and that's exactly how it sounds before we get the engine wet at All with the
engine completely dry
we're going to clean it reason being is a lot of the dirt and Debris that gets on the engine is just
dust and
Road grind that
settles on the top of everything so before we get water on here and get it completely soaking wet and then that water pushes the
Dirt into places. We can't easily reach. We're going to clean it and to do that. It's really simple
We're going to be using brushes
First since there's going to be a lot of dust get your dust masks on and it really doesn't matter what brushes you use I?
Like to use these brushes because they have a long handle so you could get into those hard-to-reach spaces, but we have a toothbrush
We have regular painters brushes if that's what you could find and then we have metal wire brushes
And I'll show you why we're using that in a second
So these brushes are being used to agitate all the surface dust but how do you remove that
Well there's a couple of ways and it depends what you have
I personally like using a vacuum that way you could suck it up
And we'll also use this later to help dry the engine
But if you don't have a vacuum then you could use something like a leaf blower
Or you could use one of these attachments on an air compressor to blow away all that dust and dirt
So let me show you how this works
We're using a vacuum and a brush together although the dirt here is pretty loose already and could just be sucked up
so where there isn't li-like around the sensors or hard-to-reach places work that brush in there and
Agitate the dirt so it becomes loose
And then you have the vacuum right there to suck it up, and you might not think this is doing much
But this is before the dryclean and this is after and that's all from just using a dry brush
So now you're going to want to brush off as many
Surfaces in the engine bay as you can this whole process is pretty quick, and it only takes about five minutes
And it's definitely helpful to have a few different sized brushes now brushes are great
But it could be hard to reach into these tight spaces
So an air nozzle like this that connects to an air compressor
Works awesome they get even more dust out of the engine bay and look at all that dust getting blown out
Another option is to use a leaf blower which also works well
and with some vacuums all you have to do is clip the hose around and
It will blow the air out instead of sucking it in
That's all it takes to dry clean an engine and we get a lot of the surface dust off the engine before we get it
Wet now. I'm done with this engine. It's completely dry creams, but one thing I want to mention
We have this intake here. Which is metal. It's aluminum, but it's in pretty good shape
It's also a small part of the engine on some cars like in this Jaguar
We have a large metal intake this is aluminum, and you can see there's discoloration on it stains
It's pitted and corroded, and it doesn't look good and since it's such a big part of how this engine looks
It's important that we clean this and what we're going to be using is a metal wire brush, and it's pretty simple
We just rub the metal wire brush back and forth and you could do this entire job with a metal wire brush
But this is pretty big so if you have a rotary tool like this one with a metal wire
Attachment will make cleaning this a lot
Easier it also tends to come out a little bit shinier when you're using the rotary tool rather than by hand you want to make
Sure that you're careful around any plastic discs like centers or rubber hoses?
And look at how much better that looked now once we clean the rest of the engine Bay
It's going to look even better. Want know what here you go?
This is what it looks like what a nice and clean engine bay you can see that aluminum really sets it off
It makes it look great, but you don't necessarily need to clean this in every car for example
I already super clean the engine in this Ford fiesta
And I didn't touch the aluminum at all and this still came out great
And in this van the engine bay doesn't have a lot of aluminum
But what we do have is is aluminum right here for the lettering and I think if we polish this up it looked good against
the black intake
So it just takes a few seconds to run the wire wheel across this and clean it up real nice and for just a couple
Of seconds of work look at how good that looks and once we clean this up and get that dark black the silver and black
Contrast is going to look awesome. And that is all for step two dry cleaning your engine a couple of brushes
Dusting the engine off vacuuming it up and that gets us ready for the next step
and
Our third step the step that gets everybody nervous is the wet cleaning step this is where we take a hose and we wet down
the Engine Bay
But you don't have to worry I'm going to show you everything you need to know so you don't damage your engine and this is
Actually a lot easier than everyone makes it out to be
Now a common question is should you clean the engine when it's warm or cold and the answer to that is you could clean it
When it's warm or cold if you're going to clean a warm engine
Just put your hand on top of it and make sure you could comfortably keep it there if it's too hot let the engine cool
Down you don't want to put cold water on a hot engine because it causes the metals to contract quickly and that could either warp
or crack engine parts
But a warm engine is definitely better to clean on than a cold one because all that dirt grime and grease
Comes off easier when it's warmer just think about cleaning dishes
You clean dishes with warm water not cold water, but you can't clean an engine when it's cold in this case
I'll be cleaning a cold engine
So you'll see how it comes out and let me show you what we're going to using the cleaner again not too many materials
We have our hose we have these cleaning wipes
Soapy water a garbage bag some microfiber towels and an assortment of brushes and pipe cleaners the first thing we're going to do is grab
Our garbage bag because we're going to be cleaning the top first
We're going to be working our way top down everybody forgets the hood
But that's a pretty important part
So what you want to do is you want to cover the bulk of the engine you don't want a lot of water getting on
Top of the engine it's okay to get off to the sides
But you definitely don't want to soak the top of the engine and this goes for any engine
You're cleaning whether in a truck an engine that already has a plastic cover or an engine
That's mostly covered by the wiper shroud you should always cover the engine to play it safe. So for the wet cream process first
we're going to clean the hood and then we're going to clean the outside of the engine Bay and then we're going to remove the
garbage bag and clean the actual engine itself
So let's get back to the mustang and start cleaning the hood
First you want to hose down the painted surfaces on the hood and that garbage bag is working great to keep that engine dry
Since our hood liners dirty rinse that off as well
But if your hood liner is sagging or looks delicate don't get it wet because water is only going to make it work
But this one's in good shape to have no problem storing it down next grab a degreaser like Soapy water and spray down the hood
Liner and painted surfaces now with a microfiber towel simply wipe down the painted surface and remove the dirt and grease it should come off
Pretty easily if your hood liner is really dirty use some carpet cleaner and let it soak carpet Cleaner works great on Hood liners
Finally rinse everything down with water and wash all the dirt away now. I can still see some stains over here
I'm going to show you how to fix that in our last step but for now
Let's go clean the Engine Bay before
Removing the bag we want to clean the entire
Outside of the Engine bay so pick a side to start on I'm going to start here and work my way around
First rinse down this part of the engine bay to remove all the surface dirt don't use a high-pressure jet setting which could force water
Into electrical Connectors next grab a cleaning wipe and wipe down the easy-to-reach surfaces the cleaning wipes not only absorb the dirt
But it helps remove the oil and grease and you can tell this is getting clean because check out how dirty this wipe is now
We want to rinse away all that dirt that we loosened up, and then grab your favorite degreaser in this case
I'm using Soapy water
Which is just a square root of dish soap and the rest filled with warm water
Generously spray down the entire area and I like using dish soap because it's strong enough to clean the grease but it also won't degrade
The metal or the rubber or plastic
Surfaces in the engine bay then grab a brush and wipe down every surface that you could reach the more surfaces that you could brush
The cleaner the finished products going to be so for any really tight spots you could grab your pipe cleaner and these work awesome for
Getting into those spots you can't normally get into and finally we just loosened up all that dirt
Which is still sitting in that engine bed?
So to remove it rinse it away with the hose now repeat this process for the rest of the engine Bay spray it down
Wipe it down Rinse spray the Degreaser
agitate with a brush
And then rinse it all away each side should take about five minutes to thoroughly clean and it's really not difficult to do
And with everything around the engine bay cleaned up now
we want to carefully remove that bag so you don't get water all over the engine and
The bag trick does a great job at keeping your engine dry and at this point?
We're at the hardest part of this whole process we're going to be cleaning the engine and we have a big V8 engine here
So we have a lot of area to cover if you have a smaller 4-cylinder engine
It's a lot quicker
But as you could tell we have a ton of hoses and wires and just a lot of little
Crevices to get into to get this clean so that could get overwhelming real quick, but I have a bunch of tips and tricks
I'm going to show you to make it so it's not that bad and the first one is
Split the engine down the middle and pick a side to start cleaning on so I'm going to start on the passenger side
I'm going to be working my way from the front to the back and the tricky part to this is we can't use a hose
To rinse down the engine so we need to have good access to clean the engine
But you can see we have this intake in the way, and you can just work around it
But it's pretty big and it's going to make it difficult to clean here
so let's remove it just disconnect the two sensors pop off a couple of hoses and
remove the intake which gives us a lot more room and the edit benefit is that we could clean this out of the car and
More importantly now
We have a lot more access to the passenger side of the engine
So I'm cleaning the actual engine first clean off any grease and oil with your cleaning wipes
We have a pretty thick layer of grease here
but it's coming right off with the wipe and
removing the thick grease like this is going to help the engine cool more efficiently because grease acts as a layer of insulation between the
Engine and the cold air around it and check out all that grease we removed
Next spray down the area with soapy water and since we're only using a fine mist
We don't have to worry about damaging anything
So you could spray it everywhere then use a brush to agitate all the dirty
Surfaces and for any surfaces that you can't reach now's when you can use those pipe cleaners and get into those really tight spaces
Now if you don't have a pipe cleaner to clean those hard-to-reach areas and the little tight surfaces
I want to show you something to use that everybody has and that is a toothbrush
so wet down the surface and the stiff Bristles do a good job at agitating that dirt and cleaning it out a
Toothbrush also works really well on those tough to clean wiring harnesses now after loosening up all that dirt
We need to somehow remove it and with all the other parts of the engine
We just use the hose and rinsed it all away, but unfortunately we have a lot of electronics here
We have those spark plug holes and just things we don't want to get soaking wet. So instead of using the hose
We're going to be using a microfiber towel
And we're going to wipe everything
down that
way the towel is absorbing both the soapy water and the dirt and grease we loosened up so basically we're cleaning and drying at the
Same time and you can't worry about getting the microfiber towel dirty that actually means that you're wiping away the grease
Here's what a new microfiber
Towel looks like here's what the one that we're drying with looks like so instead of all the grease being stuck on here
It's getting sucked up into our microfiber towel now some spaces like back in there are going to be really difficult to get into
So a little trick grab your pipe cleaner
And then grab your microfiber towel and wrap it in the pipe cleaner and now you can force your pipe cleaner back there and make
It easier to get to those hard-to-reach
spaces all
right and with all that dirt and grease gun and cleaned up check that out that is looking so good, and we haven't even
Detailed it yet, so that's just clean once we detail it. It's going to look Brand-new
So I'm just going to real quick clean this up
Just like we did the other side and with that our engine and engine bay are clean so let's move on to the next step
now after cleaning
We're left with a wet engine bay so grab a microfiber towel a nice clean one and start drying everything down
This is actually a pretty important step you want the engine to be completely dry before
We move to the next step which is
Detailing and one thing you'll notice as you're drying your towel is going to start getting dirty
so you're also picking up that extra dirt that you might have left behind and
as you're drying you might see a spot like down there that I totally miss so just get in there with your towel if you
need to grab some Soapy water and clean it up and
Finally as you're drying you might encounter a spot where you have puddled water just like here and also in here
Make sure you dry those areas out good because you don't want any standing water for when we put the battery back in so get
Your towel in there, and absorb it or a little trick that works really well if you have a vacuum
Just suck that water right out
So dry the entire engine bay absorbing as much water as you can and there we go with our engine completely dried
We are ready for our last step which is easily the most rewarding step
and
Our final step is a detailing step but before we detail the engine Bay don't forget
We have to detail the hood now washing this hood didn't come out as clean as I wanted it to and one thing you could
Do which looks awesome is pop off these clips and remove the hood liner since we already clean this and it's completely dry
I'm going to be using a black non flammable fabric
Dye to restore the hood liner now
Obviously, you don't have to do this if your hood liner is not bad
But this is going to make a huge difference for mine, and also they discontinued this for my car
So you can't even get a new one if you wanted and this is turning out nicely now as we let this dry
Let's detail the rest of the hood so grab your favorite spray wax and just spray all the painted surfaces
We're going to go all the way around
After we're done spraying grab a microfiber towel
And we're just going to buff in that spray wax right into that paint since we have our spray wax all ready now
we could spray down all the painted surfaces in our engine Bay and
then buff that wax into the paint and
this is not only going to protect the paint but it's going to make it a deeper red and
Now that all our painted surfaces in the engine Bay are detailed
It's time to detail all the rubber and plastic surfaces and in order to do that
We're going to be using a water-based trim restorer this dries non greasy
So it won't collect dust it restores a deep black color in the rubbers and plastics and it actually
Protects the rubber and plastic as well, and a mistake I see all the time, please don't do this don't use
WD-40 don't use motor oil don't use any oily or greasy products in your engine Bay?
Not only is it going to collect dust but it's going to damage those plastics and rubbers so don't use these so be sure to
Use a trim restorer that's safe on plastics and rubber and what I like to do I
Like to pour a bunch of the trimmer store in one little spot like that then grab a clean brush get some trimmer store on
your brush
And we're going to start on one side and work our way around
so we'll start back here and
Start brushing it into the plastics and rubber as you spread the product in and there's not enough just to have your brush into more
And spread it around right now don't worry about getting smooth coverage
Just make sure everything you want covered is covered on
Complex surfaces like the top of this distributor the brush is going to make it possible to get complete coverage
Just spend some time and work it in there good
And when you're doing is you want to make sure that you don't apply any product to the belt by mistake any product that gets?
On the could cause the belt to squeak or even worse slip
After you're done applying the product early let it sit and soak for about 10 minutes
After letting it sit for a few minutes grab your microfiber towel
And now we're going to buff off all the plastic pieces that we put trimmer store on the idea is we let the product Soak
Into the pores of the plastic and rubber now
We're removing that top layer, so it doesn't collect dust and so we could even it out
So you basically want to rub down every surface you touch with the brush to keep track of that parts you buffed with the towels?
I work on one side of the engine and then when I'm done I move to the other
Now after buffing the entire engine bay this is looking amazing
Check that out, and you could stop here
But I have one more step that I like to do using paint markers to really set this apart and what we want to do
Is we want to look around the engine bay and just look for parts that look rusted or boats that just don't look good for
example
There's one right here a rusted bolt like this has ruined the look of your perfectly clean engine
Compartment so grab a metal wire brush and just clean off that rust and then grab your paint marker and cover that rust in black
Paint and I know that doesn't seem like much
But little details like that make all the difference and since we have the paint markers out
I have one more quick tip that's really going to make a difference and that is working with faded lettering although this doesn't look that
Bad this washer Fluid only cap is
Faded so you can grab your paint marker and just color the raised letters only and look at that
Attention to detail like that is going to really set your engine Bay apart from everybody else's and with that man
Just look at this engine. It's so clean we are almost done
We just need to put a couple of pieces in that we took out so let's go do that
Let's add our cleaned intake and our cleaned battery and we can't forget about our hood
Insulation that looks so much better than before. Here's the before and after look at that and
Just to show you the car starts up with no problems. No check engine lights
there you go and
That is how you clean your engine bay now this takes about two hours total to do and it's really simple
Just take your time and have fun with it and you'll get results
Just like this this engine looks brand new not only does this look good
But all the rubber and the plastic is
Protected plus you have an engine bay you could be proud of and if you really wanted to it's so clean you could eat off
Of it as always all the products I used in this video are linked in the description
So you could easily find them hopefully the video was helpful
if it was remember to give it a thumbs up if you're not a subscriber
consider hitting that subscribe button
and
Finally if you go to super clean your engine be sure to take a before and after picture because I want to see it tag
Me in it send it to me on Instagram. Whatever you need to do
I'd love to check it out and if you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments below
I'm going to show you how to super clean your engine bay so clean that you'll be able to eat off of it and
No, I am not joking after you guys saw this engine Bay in one of my videos
I got thousands of comments from you asking
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