As in, paying a detailing shop to detail the whole engine bay? I don't mean polishing a few parts here and there. Just cleaning and detailing the whole engine, to make it look brand new. I'm asking this for a friend of mine. He's into car shows and a local car show is about a month away. He wants to enter his car in the car show. Detailing the outside and interior of the car isn't hard, but the engine bay is definitely harder. Instead of going through the pain of trying to detail the tight spaces of the engine bay, he thought about hiring someone to do it. So, how much do you think this will run him? Oh, btw, he has a '00 Accord V6. Pretty much all show though.

 

less than 5 bucks for a bottle of Simple Green

 

diddo on the simple green, works like a charm.

 

of the 2 cars I've simple greened (full strength), the black tubes turned flaky whitish. I heard that I'm supposed to use Armor All on them after I simple green.
For my volvo, The engine looks pretty good.
On the 93 Altima, I've simple greened the whole engine 3 times and it's finally looking good. I had the valve cover gasket leak for a long time so dirt's crusted on the tranny down bottom. Just watch out for the alternator and other electrical stuff. also, don't use high pressure water spray.

You could steam clean the engine. Some show guys do that. Be certain that your electrical connections are tight. Steamed engines look clean, but you gotta spray some stuff to make it shine, like CD1.

Jay

 

Simple Green? That thing didn't even work on my own car, much less trying on a show car. Well, anyway, my friend is taking his car to various detailing shops to get quotes on detailing his engine bay. Even if Simple Green did work for a few of you, I highly doubt it cleans everything. On a show car, it has to be spotless. I'm pretty sure whatever quotes that my friend will get, it will surely be expensive. I don't think the price will affect him much though, since he already has spent over $10,000 on his car along. $10,000 just on show and very little go = waste of money? Maybe, I wouldn't do it though. This will be his first car show, so he just want to do it right.

 

I'm not understanding your original post. I think the rest of us were trying to offer tips on doing it yourself as having someone detail it is unnecessary.
It's still a good idea to do some cleaning before bringing it in. They won't have to spend time/money on doing the easy areas so they can get right to detailing the minute spaces.
In my opinion, if you can't get to the dirt w/simple green and some water, you probably can't see it anyways.
Here's another tip: after he gets detailed, whenever he washes the car (I assume very often cuz it's for show) he should clean the engine w/simple green. I've seen a guy use simple green every month and his engine's still sparkling.
Jay

 

i am very hesitant to go out and actually spray simple green and hosing it off. I know that I'm suppose to plastic wrap the filter and watch the altenator, but is that really it? Just spray simple green on all the dirty stuff and rinse?

 

Go to a search engine and type in "clean engine". You'll find many places that recommend simple green or Gunk. Simple green is ok for the environ so most people go w/it. It's also slightly stronger than Gunk and won't mess up your paint.
Is it as easy as spray and rinse? Depends. On my volvo, that's all i did and it's so clean now. On the Altima, I've done spray/rinse 3 times and it's nearly done, but that's cuz the dirt was crusted on. If I sprayed/brushed/rinsed, it woulda been clean by now, but I'm lazy.
I also read that steam cleaning involves pressure, which might seep.
Jay