How to SUPER CLEAN your Engine Bay
Hey guys ChrisFix here, and today 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 "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 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. 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. 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. Don't worry, I'm going to explain each step as we go through it. 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. The whole point of disconnecting your battery is peace of mind.
Everybody's biggest concern 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. 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 worse. But this one's in good shape to have no problem spraying 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 squirt 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 bay 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 trim restorer in one little spot like that then grab a clean brush get some trim restorer 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 belt could cause the belt to squeak or even worse slip After you're done applying the product thoroughly 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 trim restorer 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 towel 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 bolts 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 Aww 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.
