Autopia Guide to Detailing: Engine Cleaning & Detailing

Soooooo do you guys use different dressings for metal and the rubbers? I mean I hear people use 303 aero for the rubbiners or AA tire foam or CD2l, but I have a tuner who has metal intakes and upgraded turbos .... wondering what to do about getting them sparkling
 
Alexshimshimhae said:
Soooooo do you guys use different dressings for metal and the rubbers? I mean I hear people use 303 aero for the rubbiners or AA tire foam or CD2l, but I have a tuner who has metal intakes and upgraded turbos .... wondering what to do about getting them sparkling
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Sometimes you can use the same dressing stuff for metal and rubber/plastic, but that's primarily with matte/satin-finished metals. I don't like the dressing-on-polished/glossy painted- metal approach, but others do it.



For other metals, use metal polish or stuff made for paint (be careful with M105/M205). Just don't get aggressive on anodized aluminum or you'll polish the anodozing right off.
 
I gotta find out what material it's made out of then...If i use separate products, I should for instance cover the parts i'm going to use metal polish for, for instance the get 303 to spray down the rubber portions, take off the coverings and then polish off the metals?
 
Alexshimshimhae said:
I gotta find out what material it's made out of then...If i use separate products, I should for instance cover the parts i'm going to use metal polish for, for instance the get 303 to spray down the rubber portions, take off the coverings and then polish off the metals?
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I hardly ever (can't remember the last time) spray products if I'm remotely worried about overspray. I use some kind of application medium like a cloth or a swab.



And I usually polish the metal first, but that's just me.
 
Alexshimshimhae said:
metal first and then rubber spray everything?
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First, clean everything. Then polish the metal. Then polish/wax/etc. the painted surfaces. Then apply dressing to the rubber/etc. using applicators/swabs/etc.



If there are "weird surfaces" that you want to use dressing on, do those separately. Example- the outer cases of alternators sometimes respond incredibly well to the Autoglym Bumper Care (who woulda thunk it?), odd situations like that need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis and sometimes you don't know what'll work/not until you try it.
 
I was afraid that you were ganna say that...not that i've done man engine details like ever lol but seeing why people would charge 100 bux for a proper engine detail... sigh...ESPECIALLY for those with cyborg like rocket science get ups under the hood =[
 
What a great writeup and thread. I have a CTS-V that I daily drive and after two winters, it's time to tackle the engine. I'd prefer a pro to tackle it because I'm so scared of putting water on the engine. After reading this thread, however, I feel that maybe I can tackle it after all. We'll see.....there are still a few weeks of cool weather to do planning before I attempt it.



Thanks again!
 
bob_r said:
What a great writeup and thread. I have a CTS-V that I daily drive and after two winters, it's time to tackle the engine. I'd prefer a pro to tackle it because I'm so scared of putting water on the engine. After reading this thread, however, I feel that maybe I can tackle it after all. We'll see.....there are still a few weeks of cool weather to do planning before I attempt it.



Thanks again!
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I saw your post about finding a pro to do it, wish I knew somebody (but if I knew any pros that I thought were OK I might let 'em do my beaters ;) ).



As long as you're approaching this cautiously, I don't think you'll have any problems. You don't sound like somebody who's gonna spray the engine compartment with a big stream of water from a hose or anything like that.



If you work small areas at a time, with brushes, rags, small sponges, swabs, or somesuch it oughta go OK. Limit the area of operation to something you can easily manage. That alone should let you limit the amount of water you need to worry about.



If anything "electrical looking" makes you wonder, just wrap it up with aluminum foil and deal with it later in some careful manner.



Consider the use of solvents (PrepSol/Pre-Kleano/etc., products used to clean surfaces prior to painting- check the yellow pages for your local autobody/supply store). Solvents evaporate cleanly so there's no rinsing and they can really clean greasy things up.



I would *NOT* use much in the way of dressings as they often attract dust/etc. making subsequent cleanups tougher. Yeah, I do go both ways on this one, but I know what will/won't work with my vehicles and the way I use them. For now, you might want to just get things clean and use something *minimal* on rubber stuff. Plastics will often shine up a little with a leaves-stuff-behind Quick Detailer ("QD") and you can generally get QD anywhere/everywhere without causing any issues so there's no need to be uber-careful with it (well, within reason).
 
Brad B. said:
And it is really much easier to 'maintain' a detailed engine bay after you do it really well once.
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Yeah, IME it only takes a few minutes if you do it at every wash. I'm hard-pressed to think of any vehicle where I had to do a second "big cleanup" as long as I did those quickie jobs regularly.
 
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