Don’t Just Spray Your Car’s Engine Bay! Right and Wrong Way to Clean an Engine Bay!

Hey guys, I’m Andy. I’m gonna tell you the right way and the wrong way to clean your engine bay. When you’re cleaning the outside of the car, you can just spray all over, it really doesn’t matter. But when you’re cleaning under the hood, it makes a difference. You don’t wanna do just this.

It’s really not the best idea to be spraying the engine down while it’s running. And you wanna stay away from spraying near the serpentine belt area, like this. Whoa, watch out for the fan. And never spray down the alternator, you’re gonna get into the internals. And that’s gonna be bad.

Well, it’s still charging, but don’t do that.

The coil packs, you never wanna spray those down with water. They could arc out and cause a malfunction. These are sealed pretty good, but you definitely just wanna avoid that as much as possible. You wanna avoid the fuse box as much as possible right here.

Definitely, don’t do this. Any leaves and debris or pine needles on the cowl, you don’t wanna just spray them off, you’re gonna end up clogging some of the drains, there’s drains that are down in here. And you’re gonna end up with water on your floor or other issues. So, don’t do this. In a hot engine, you never wanna spray down a hot engine with cold water.

You’re gonna end up causing issues with the engine. You may crack something that obviously, you don’t wanna crack. And you’re gonna have steam coming off the engine.

This engine is extremely hot right now. And if you have any leaks in this area, like one of these hoses is popped off, you definitely don’t wanna spray in there, especially something like this, you could hydro-lock the engine.

So, I’m not gonna do that right now because I don’t wanna ruin this engine completely. But you don’t wanna do that. Some of the reasons why you don’t wanna pressure-wash an engine is some of these connectors. They’re weatherproof, but they’re not pressure-washer proof. So, if you’re getting out with a pressure washer, or even spraying it with a hose, you’re gonna get moisture down in there, and that’s gonna cause corrosion over time.

It may not break anything today, but when you go start your car up in a week or two, it may not start because you have corrosion in there. You don’t wanna use any type of cleaner that’s gonna be flammable, especially on a hot engine. I know you have oil on there, but you don’t wanna spray that like this, especially on a hot exhaust.

The battery, when you’re cleaning off the battery, you wanna keep in mind there’s actually vents in the battery. So, right here there’s a vent, and you really don’t wanna spray water in that vent.

You can spray off the top of the battery, just try to stay away from that vent. The computer right there, you don’t wanna spray directly on the computer. And you have your engine dipstick and your transmission dipstick, you wanna make sure those are completely down before you spray. You don’t wanna do that. It’s all nice and dried off now.

Don't Just Spray Your Car's Engine Bay! Right and Wrong Way to Clean an Engine Bay!

Hopefully, I didn’t ruin this too bad. Let’s go inside and do it the right way. All right. So, let’s take a look at this engine under here. We’re gonna start at the top and work our way down.

There are some leaves and debris up here. Anything you can grab with your hands, just grab that. And then if you see any down in here in this area, these look pretty good.

There’s just a lot of dust in here. The stuff we can’t pick up, we’re just gonna use a vacuum and suck it up.

There’s still a lot of dust and debris on here. Before we soak this down, we wanna use either a blowgun or if your vacuum has a reverse function, or also even a leaf-blower would work as well. At this point, we’re gonna take some engine degreaser and some water, mix together, and we’re gonna spray some of those areas we want clean, staying away from those electrical components like the alternator, the ignition coils, and some of those other areas we were talking about earlier. So, when we’re going on the fuse box, as long as the fuse box door is not off, we can soak that down. We can even get in under here.

Gonna be okay. Just try to stay away from some of the electrical connectors.

And we don’t wanna spray it directly into the alternator. On the airbox, on the snorkel. I’m not gonna spray the computer down.

Then we can go back with a rag or a brush. It’d be ideal if you had a bigger brush than this, and just try to scrub some of the grease out of here. So, it’s okay to get the engine bay wet. It’s made for that. It’s just not made for extreme pressure.

You just want to just wet it with the rag and stuff. You can rinse this off after you’re done, just lightly and stay away from those areas. If you have an engine bay like this with lots of covers, you can take those covers off and just wash them how you would wash your car. You can scrub them right up and spraying them is not a big deal.

After you’re done rinsing it off lightly, you can take the blowgun again and just try to blow it off, or just leave the hood up and let it naturally dry.

So, there’s a nice, safe, and easy way to clean your engine bay. If you want to, you can use some type of plastic protector or rubberized protector, but just use one that’s gonna work under your engine.