A car is a complex machine and if you spend the time to wash your care, wax it, and keep it clean you might be missing a step. If you regularly clean your car then you know its important to keep the car running smooth is to regularly clean the car engine. This isn’t difficult at all and instead just requires a little bit of time and effort on your part. Not sure if you care engine needs to be cleaned? How does it run? If it sputters and coughs that is a good sign that you need to do some cleaning. Ideally you get this taken care of before it reaches this point.
How to Clean a Car Engine
We will break down the process into several steps to make it easier for you and you will soon see that it is not a difficult task to clean the care engine, it simply requires your effort.
Step 1: Engine Preparation for Cleaning
Compressed air is your friend when it comes to this kind of job. You want to check your vehicles grill, hood, and vent openings for anything that might be in them. It could be random debris that gets trapped from dirt to leaves. You want to clean all this out and compressed air makes the job easy. Since you will be cleaning the car engine you need to make sure you cover all of the exposed wires or electrical components. You do not want to get them wet, as water and electricity don’t mix well. So be sure to cover all the sensors, wires, spark plug openings, and the distributor. Honestly the easiest thing to do is use plastic bags and rubber bands to put a good enough seal on all the electrical components. You are not dunking the tank in water, so it doesn’t need to be completely waterproof just good enough to prevent these parts from getting soaked.
Step 2: Deal with additional grease
Essentially the easiest way to deal with this is to let the engine idle for a little bit. Ten minutes should be fine. The idea is to warm the engine up and it also loosens any of the extra gunk that has been built up. Plus with the engine being warm any degreasing products will work a lot easier on it.
Step 3: Apply Degreaser To The Engine
Don’t go for the fast and easy route and pick up a petroleum based degreaser. While these are very effective and work very well they are also very harsh and degrade any hoses and seals they come in contact with quickly. So instead look for a water or citrus based cleaner. This requires more elbow grease but it will prevent any harsh chemicals from affecting the seals. Best practice is work bottom to top. This prevents any accidental spills on you but if you have designated work clothes and don’t care then go either way. Degreasers are strong, regardless, and remember, they are meant to degrease so be sure to cover up anything that has wax on it, like your fenders, otherwise you’ll have to go back and rewax everything again. If you forget just hose it off to get all the degreaser off of it, since the degreaser is a spray you will want to hose off the hood and grille as well. If not you will have to clean and wax the outside of the car again.
Next is to determine how dirty your engine is. If it’s really dirty you’ll need to let it sit on the engine for a good five minutes, if it’s mostly clean then only a few minutes, roughly 3 is enough. Dirtier engines require long handled brush, sometimes called a parts brush, this makes it easy to reach all parts of the engine. If it’s still having a hard time with the brush you can add a little car wash soap to the brush to help get the grime off, just be sure to really hose down the engine afterwards.
Step 4: Washing the Car Engine
This is very easy. Grab your nearest garden hose and just use a regular stream. You want to avoid the high pressure stuff because it may damage the electrical components regardless of your precautions it can also do unwanted damage, so keep it nice and slow.
Step 5: Last Step – How To Dry
Engine heat is a quick drier but don’t let it sit and air dry, much like a car wash you don’t want it to sit because it will spot. Instead be sure to wipe it down and buff it with some engine cleaner to make it shine.
As you can see this is really easy and these were just some tips on how to clean your car engine.
