Cleaning Under the Hood questions

[Lo04Chevy]

I have a couple questions pretaining to cleaning under the hood. I have the K&N recharge kit for the filter. I have never cleaned under the hood of a 88-98 obs silverado.



So what can I use to clean my engine bay?

[phamkl]

You probably won`t get enough water into the filter element to hydrolock it, especially if it`s a large V8. Back in the day people use to clean their engines out by pouring water straight into the carburetor. But just to be safe I would cover the filter with plastic wrap or aluminum foil or something.



Other than that what I do is spray the whole thing off with a dilute 1:10-20 APC solution everywhere, let sit for a little bit, then hose off the whole thing. After I let loose with a foaming tire shine on all the plastic and rubber parts. Avoid the belt and alternator.

[Accumulator]

Lo04Chevy- While the underhood electronics of some GM engines (e.g., LT1s) are kinda water-sensitive, I wouldn`t expect you to have any big issues. Use aluminum foil to cover anything you don`t want really wet, and use something like P21s TAW (others use Simple Green but I don`t like it).



Rinse things off first to get rid of the loose stuff, then spray the TAW (or some other APC) on everything. Let it dwell, and agitate whatever you can get to with some kind of brush. Then rinse it off and see how things look.



I`ve cleaned a *lot* of engines over the years, and I`ve simply never had any problems. Just don`t blast anything electrical-looking with the hose and you`ll probably be OK...I mean, hey, if you have some problem don`t go blaming me but I really don`t think you will.



If some area is really greasy-nasty, you might want to use a solvent on that to avoid having to really saturate it with water/cleaner.



You can prep the painted areas just like the rest of the body`s paint (paint cleaner, polishes, even just cleanerwax) and wax them. You can use metal polishes and waxes on plated and "bare metal" stuff. Treat the rest of the underhood stuff with something like 303.



A quick going-over when you wash oughta keep it nice for a long time.

[Eisen Hulk]

I`d stop by an Autozone and pick up some CD2 Engine Detailer! Great stuff.