Engine cleaning kicking my ***

Z

Zylo

New member
Alright, I consider my self a fairly good amatuer detailer. However.. I suck at engine detailing.



My constant attempts at cleaning my 03' F150's engine (4.6L) has resulted in nothing more than a permanent belt squeal. Tensioner or Idler pulley is toast, and it only does it when wet. Didn't happen till I started detailing the engine.



Ok, so that's an easy fix... aluminum foil.



But.. what can I do to clean the grime? I use Citrus Engine Brite from Autozone, and it doesn't seem to do much.. my hoses have this "baked" on dirt spotting, and no amount of scrubbing is taking it off! :angry



Someone please school me on engine detailing or throw some hints out please!



I tried to reference my old copy of the Autopia Detailing Guide I bought a while back, and I get an error when entering the activation code :( :doh :(



Thanks all!
 
Your F150 may not have this problem, but on many modern cars, there are a lot of sensors wired to the engine and moisture introduced by some cleaning techniques wreaks havoc, so proceed with caution!



Because of this issue, my car's engine bay is the dirtiest part of my car, but it's a real nightmare if moisture gets in the wrong place, so I live with it.
 
I have a similar setup as you, ('02 4.2 V6) and I had no problems cleaning my engine. All I did was lightly hose down the major components, avoiding the area where the spark plugs and belts are, and then I sprayed 50:50 simple green, scrubbed, and rinsed, and here's where I took the extra caution: I used my shop vac's blow function to basically blast all the water out of crevices. This didn't get it totally clean, but I'm not entering into any shows either. I dressed all the black plastic with Meguiar's GC Vinyl/Rubber, and used some detail spray to clean up any spots where I missed. Went over the engine bay one last time with the shop vac and let it dry for an hour before starting it again.



As for your hoses, I think 303 should do the trick since it cleans while adding protection/gloss.
 
I have always detailed my cars with out covering things up and never had a problem. As long as you start with a warm car and work quickly not letting stuff dry out. andprotect afterwards things work out fine. And on my 10year old jeep you can eat out of the engine bay.
 
Unless the tensioner pulley bearing is toast (and it may be) I would think you would do well to put a GoodYear Gatorback belt on your truck. Your tensioner pulley bearing is sealed and in theory you shouldn't have been able to harm it, though you may have a bad one. Ford has had a belt problem on both the 4.6 and 5.4 engines, supercharged and non supercharged. The Gatorback will cure this type of squeal. I ran into it a few years ago on my 5.4 after I had chipped it and put a set of headers and exhaust on it. When it shifted gears I would get a squeal. I've seen a number of people with the same problem and a $28 belt fixed the complaint.
 
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