Tyler0309

whats the best way to clean the engine and the bay?

Thanks

Brangeta

Here's some advice on the engine cleaning. I copy and pasted this from an email where I told another Camaro owner how to do it. A lot of the topics you'll find on here about engine cleaning are basically for piece of junk cars that are just filthy and the recommendations are WAAAAAY overkill. If your engine bay isn't a disaster, don't do those methods.

If you have a '93-'97 LT1, before cleaning the engine, you need to cover the optispark distributor with a towel or a couple towels depending on how thick they are. It's pretty much just below the throttle body and water pump.

I don't recommend actually washing anything around there and you certainly shouldn't use a hose or power sprayer like you can do on an LS1 Camaro or just about any newer car. Get the optispark very wet and the car won't run and you'll have to replace it and it's expensive and time consuming.

If the car has a lot of dust under the hood, go ahead and just vacuum it up. Many people don't think of doing that, but hey, it works a lot better than washing.

After that, you can use store-brand orange cleaner spray to clean the painted surfaces and plastic. I'm not sure what it is the generic form of; I get it at the grocery store and it's a cheap and weak degreaser for cleaning kitchen counters or something. Simple Green is a powerful degreaser and unless you threw up or had a dead raccoon under the hood or something, it's totally overkill and can damage plastics, rubber, paint, etc. Only clean the painted surfaces, the radiator cover, and anything plastic when cleaning an LT1 engine bay. Don't try cleaning the alternator, any wiring, or metal parts. Spray some of the orange cleaner on, and use an old toothbrush and scrub the grime off. It works particularly well on the painted surfaces. Fill an old sprayer of some sort with water and rinse after you're through. You don't have to get every trace of the orange spray off because it's so weak that it doesn't hurt anything. You just want to get maybe 50% of it off. Dry the areas with a towel to prevent rust.

To make your rubber and plastic parts look new, just spray some tire foam on them, let it soak in, and then wipe with a dry towel you can throw away when done. It works particularly well on the air intake, all the coolant hoses, windshield wiper cowl, and the windshield wiper "aerodynamic" pieces if you have those pieces. I like the STP brand because it isn't extremely glossy. Armor All is too greasy looking. If you have to go out and buy this stuff and can't find STP, Meguiars makes a great kind that doesn't foam up, and bonus: it smells like cherries (though your head will start spinning if you don't leave the garage open...)

If you want another detailing tip, to make your weather strip look newer and actually prolong it's life, the owner's manual recommends using silicone spray on it. I believe Prestone is the brand and it's a yellow can. There's also another brand that's in a red can with small black cap. You basically just spray it on a paper towel, wipe it on, and it turns the paper towel black and absorbs extremely quickly on the weather strip. It takes a lot to actually do much good and it's kind of annoying to use. I see a lot of Camaros with terrible looking weather strip on the door exterior, and this definitely helps a lot.

Here's how good just doing the orange cleaner will make the engine bay look--I only did the painted surfaces back when I took these pics. I didn't tire shine the car except for the air intake elbow





Anyway, hope that advice helps. I'd hate to see you power wash the engine out at a car wash and get stranded, and I'd hate to see you use Simple Green and potentially destroy things.

Tyler0309

THANK YOU. i will be doing it as soon as the weather clears up.

TraceZ

Don't use tire foam under your hood. In fact, I would advise against using it anywhere.

Tire foam contains elements that will soak into plastics and rubbers and displaces the natural more durable elements from these items.

It will look great at first, then every time you use it it will do more damage until enventually parts that were once deep black on their own will appear grayish hazed if not kept treated. It turns your car into a tire-foam addict.

I recommend using 303 aerospace protectant instead. It looks just as good or better when applied, contains no silicones, is environmentally friendly and does not displace any of the plastics natural properties. It also contains a SPF40 sunshield to protect from UV rays.