I keep my car very clean, but the engine compartment had gotten to the point of being embarassing. My project for the last week has been to give it some TLC. Many thanks to the people on this forum for the inspiration and ideas.

Before:


After:

 

i want to clean my engine out but i get... scared. cats dont normally like to get wet

 

Jeez, it looks great! Unfortunately, I am in the same boat. My engine compartment looks awful. What products did you use to clean it up?

 

Hey dudes, check out Detailing Forums , our admin cleaned up his son's Clio .I thought you would like to see that thread

 

I used:

Clorox Green Works mixed with water, but undiluted for stubborn areas
TurtleWax Finish 2001 (it's not wax)
Rust-oleum plastic spray paint for the engine cover
3M 80 spray adhesive for the new hood liner

Most of the cleaning was done with a wet rag, to avoid getting too much water in undesirable places. I did do a final light rinse at the car wash.

I posted this in the X-Type forum because the ugly liner and damaged engine cover are common X-Type problems.

 

ok now you can do mines!!

 

Nice work. I lifted the hood of mine yesterday to do some cleaning and replace the crankcase breather hose and much to my surprise, my engine cover was missing!

So I called the dealer as it was either them or me who left it off, and it wasn't me. It was recently in for an ABS problem. Well, they talked to the tech who worked on it and searched around the shop and couldn't find it. Now that stupid thing is like a $100 part, so they are going to keep looking and I said I wanted it back. Apparently the tech was the guy who works on the "high end cars" (Astons, XJ's etc)...but so far he has managed to lose my engine cover and scratch my hood by laying something on it. For that they gave me a gift certificate (I buffed it out easily).

Anyway.....I think i am going to take off the intake manifold and really try to do something with the valve covers. They are hideous.

 

Great job there Tiger, thanks for sharing
Lookin good!

Here's a few pics of a before n after on my sons Renault Clio recently. it was in pretty bad condition and badly needed done, oil stains on the underside of the bonnet, 10 years of dirt n grime everywhere.
2 hours with plenty of water ( engine running ) a spray bottle of APC, A bottle of GUNK engine degreaser and a paintbrush / cloth to get into all the tight fiddly bits.
Dried afterwards and then the platcis etc treated with wet n black on a sponge 303 aerospace protectant or similar and got these results

BEFORE.....





AFTER...

]

 

Wow, big difference on both cars!

 

Tiger - it looks great! Glad I could help out with my hoodliner!