rev up your engines, today I'm going help you
answer the question, to clean or not to clean your car's engine, now there's an
old saying, cleanliness is next to godliness, well in the case of your car's
engine as far as I'm concerned that's a bunch of nonsense, check out my old celica's
engine, dirty and greasy still running strong after all these years I've never
cleaned it, but take my shiny Triumph motorcycle
look how clean that engine is, that I clean and why is that
other than vanity, it's because my triumph is an air-cooled motorcycle, and
my car it's a water-cooled engine its water that cools the engine, with a
motorcycle air has to blow over the fins on the cylinder to help cool the engine
down, if it gets dirty and greasy that'll keep it from dissipating heat that well,
but in most cars these days they're water-cooled, you want to keep all the
fins cleaned here, done inside here where the air flows to cool the radiator you
want that all clean, but the engine itself doesn't matter if it's dirty, the
heat is dissipated through the radiator not the engine itself, and modern cars
have so many electronic parts in them you start spraying cleaner then hosing
it off with water, or even worse using a pressure washer at a car wash, you can
destroy the electronics of the car cleaning it, and over the years I've had
scores of customers that have done that or their friends did it to their cars
and they towed them over to me, sometimes I had to buy new computers, because the
wiring shorted out from all the water and cleaner and ended up frying the
computer, I've even had it where they put so much spray inside there that it
sucked water inside the air filter and then hydro lock the engine and ended up
bending the piston rods, so unless you're planning on having a picnic inside your
car's hood, it's stupid to clean your engine, it doesn't serve any purpose, heck
you can't even see the stuff until you open the hood, yeah polish the hood and
the paint to make it look nice, but hey you don't live
under here, but that said there are times when you want to clean crud off of your
engine and that has to do with leaks, oil leaks especially, oil does not go well
with electricity I've had many customers they'll have a
leaking valve cover gasket, that'll end up leaking down it can get on the
alternator, it can get on the starter and that oil will eventually short it out, and
the same thing goes for coolant leaks, if you get coolant leaks and coolant it's
leaking on the alternator, or the starter or the distributor, any electronic parts,
that can ruin them and you need to remove that stuff after you fix the
problem, of course cleaning it doesn't fix the problem, you have to fix the
problem first, if a valve cover gasket is leaking you replace that, then you clean
all the residue oil off so it doesn't do any damage, if you look under your car and
you see things leaking, first you figure out what's leaking, find the source of
the leak, fix it and then clean the mess up, and to find the leaks I use this
ultra violet leak dye, you put it in whatever is leaking, the engine oil, the
coolant whatever, then you use an ultraviolet light and these funky yellow
sunglasses and you can see where the leak is coming from, and since leaks leak
all over the place it's often hard to pinpoint where it starts, so the ultra
violet dye really has made it easier for people to find leaks, but then if you
have oil or coolant all over the place you do want to clean that off, so the
residue doesn't destroy electronics, and to do that you're gonna use engine
degreaser, but the first thing is take off the negative battery terminal, you
don't want to short on electronics, so you want to loosen it, wiggle it moving
out of the way, then you want to carefully spray the degreaser on the
greasy parts, wherever the leaks were and here's yet another tip, you want
to do it on an ice cold engine, this one's been sitting all night, so it's
nice and cold, you don't want to be spraying degreaser on a hot engine, and
then when you rinse it off with the hose you don't want ice-cold water hitting a
red-hot engine and you can make metal crack, gaskets could go,
you don't want to mess around with heat so do this all on a cold car, now of
course things like alternators look they're exposed to the weather, when it
rains water comes up from the bottom water comes through the radiator, it gets
wet it's made that it can take a little bit of water, but you don't want to have
cleaner and electricity going through it and then water with it connected to the
system, so now there's no power going to it and it's cool, so you won't have any
problems if you do it on a cool engine with the battery disconnected, but that
said you still don't want to be spraying things like the distributor, it's all
electronic you don't want to get this stuff wet, some guys will even put a
plastic bag on it, and definitely stay away from things like circuit boxes and
relay boxes, you don't want to get them wet, then like most things in life have a
little patience, it's good idea to wait half an hour or 45 minutes for the
degreaser to soak in to do its thing and if it's really dirty, you can get a
scrub brush and you can scrub some of it off, when I was a younger mechanic we
used to use kerosene on the garage floor spray it on then scrub it and it hose
it off well this is the same idea, only I'm not
doing this, I'm using one of these fingernail scrubbers, it helps to
agitate it and if it's been on there a while get the really tough parts off,
then just wait like I said half an hour or 45 minutes, then get your garden hose and
hose it off, and again just do this on a cold engine, so you won't have any
problems, you can wait a couple hours for it
to dry or do what I do, get a giant fan it'll dry it a lot quicker
then when it's dry put the battery terminal back on ,don't forget to tighten
it up and away you go so now you know when not to clean your
car's engine, and when to actually clean it, and since this is a mechanic Monday
I'll be giving away a case of the spray engine degreaser, to have a chance to
win place a clean non offensive comment on the youtube comments below, and a
winner will be chosen randomly by computer to get a case of engine
degreaser to use when it's actually needed, so if you never want to miss
another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that Bell