when i bought the car the engine bay was dirty.. i kinda wiped the surface down with a wet towel cause i dont know how to wash a engine... so i was wondering how would i get the engine bay back to how it was when it first left the dealership....

 

There are a whole bunch of engine bay cleaners out there. If you are stock, just make sure the battery terminals and alternator are covered up. Spray the degreaser all over the engine, and wash it off with running water. If you have a SRI, make sure you cover up the filter as well.

 

Do a search in this section, and you'll find numerous threads on this subject.

 

is there pictures of what to cover? im not car illiterate... but im not the smartest one about cars....

 

Well, the battery is self explanatory. As far as the alternator, I don't have any pictures of it off-hand to show you.

 

essentially, if it looks like electricity is being conducted through it, you want to cover it up. that being said car engines are designed to deal with a certain amount of water, but thats not the same as blasting a hose into your engine bay.

what i do is cover the battery and the alternator (which as i remember was towards the middle and down a ways) with aluminum foil. then i just gently spray the underside of the hood and let it drip onto the engine bay. after that i sprayed some p21s:taw and scrubbed it down with a brush and a beat up sponge. then i wiped it all down with a rag and put on the appropriate stuff on either he plastic or rubber.

 

Even though I know which parts to cover up, I still clean the engine bay with a wet rag.

Something about spraying the engine bay with a hose just doesn't seem right. But that's just me.

 

Definitely the safest approach.

I honestly just wipe my engine bay down as well, because I keep my engine covers on, and they're painted.

But, for the most part, using a hose with a medium stream is fine.

 

tried that... but i cant really seem to get it clean enough(the deep black look)

 

Well I use cleaning solution and mother's back to black to get the deep black look.

For the hard to reach places, I bought a thin wool-on-a-stick type of device to reach and scrub.

 

thanks i'll try that...

 

Cleaning is easy just time consuming, cover your battery, alt and distributor like these guys said. Rinse the engine, treat it with a degreaser such as simple green or my favorite Chemical Guys Grime Reaper, scrub down all places you can reach, rinse again, dry and then treat with back to black or fade to black

 

wet it, spray degreaser, and power wash it off. the only thing you really have to worry about is if you have an intake. It wont hurt anything to power wash it from a distance. It gets done to every used car at any dealership. Then spray on some dressing and it looks brand new.

 

You really only have to worry about water where there's a possibility of causing a short circuit. Covering a battery isn't really necessary unless you somehow manage to cause a short circuit between the battery by connecting the positive and negative terminals via water.

The only other concern is probably the air filter element that goes to the intake manifold.

Special consideration is taken for older vehicles.

 

that's exactly what we did with all the cars when I worked as a detailer at CarMax

 

so youre saying i dont have to cover anything? like the guys up top said

 

invest in an engine steam cleaner. I think they go under $150.00. Google this: McCulloch MC-1275 Heavy-Duty Steam Cleaner.

 

You don't HAVE to, but it's good practice to do it.