so in the stickies the basic steps to cleaning your engine bay are as follows

1) cover all exposed wires

2) spray engine degreaser and let sit for 5 minutes

3) wash and polish


now "cover all exposed wires" is a pretty vague step. from what i can tell, almost every wire in the engine is exposed. are there some that are more sensitive than others? what about the MAF? i know that is a pretty finnicky item. then again, water has to be gettin under the hood in a strong storm. i guess its more the pressure than the liquid you gotta worry about. right ??

he also says to let water into your stock intake? why would that make a difference?

basically, can someone just explain simply how to clean your engine without running the risk of damaging something. seems like the engine is pretty waterproof from the top, but if theres a part i should be avoiding with the hose let me know.

 

Take out the battery, cover or take out the maf, cover the alternator. Don't give any particular spot in the engine bay too much pressure, or too long, always keep the hose moving.

As far as the intake, I would opt to take the intake out and clean it seperately, water can probably just sit down there and I wouldn't want to be driving and potentially suck up the water you've left down there.

 

Personally... I use a gardon hose without a sprayer on the end. I cover up the wires to my retrofitted 2k3 HID's and thats all (i do have the stock intake setup though) Then I spray the engine down with degreaser, and rinse it off. I then use some sort of detailer (armor all, Formula 2001 or whatever you prefer). The last thing I do is take it out for a drive to dry it out.

 

I would also suggest to take a towel or something similar and stick under the manifold on top of the knock sensor. I have heard people who got their knock sensor wet and it died!!!!!!!!

 

some inspiration...

 

i didnt use the hose or pressure washer idea...wussed out at the last minute. decided id rather spend 3 hours doing it by hand.


before:




after:



plus put new hood struts in, fixed the battery holder.

funny thing is the CEL popped on after i was done.

when i bought the car a month ago the CEL was on. i ran the codes and it was the charcoal cannister valve and the knock sensor. i had the tech clear them and they didnt return until yesterday when i cleaned. makes no sense.....

 

Personally when i use to detail cars at work, the only thing id cover is the distributor if there was one. Back when my car was stock the only thing i did was shove a rag into the snorkel so water doenst pool in the bottom, other then that i pressure washed the bay then used an air compressor to blow the remaining water out. Never had any problems. Now that ive changed my engine bay around, i now have to cover up my hid ballasts, rpm switch, control solenoid, air filter, fuse for my sub/amp, and my wiring for my mevi, just to be on the safe side, the only things i have to cover is my rpm switch and air filter, the rest i just do on the cautious side. Can never be too safe.

 

Nice clean compartment, nice job! re: the cel delay, in case you didn't know, it probably had to complete two full drive cycles before it returned, have you ever seen a print out of the full "drive cycle" ?, its a pita to do, i've cleared it in 70 miles once and the next time it took well over 300 with extra effort to vary the engine states, if you have a obd2 scanner then you can monitor readiness state.