A few weeks ago I pulled the 12a out of my RX-7 and have begun to prep the car to receive the 13b I had built last year. The new motor is wayyy to nice and clean to toss it in a dirty engine bay, so thus far I have covered all the electrical connections before hitting it with simple green and a pressure washer on a relatively mild setting. This wasn't nearly as effective as I'd hoped, specifically there are some stains on the firewall and lots of grime in the transmission bellhousing that I didn't have any success removing. A friend recommended oven cleaner for the bellhousing? I'd like to find something effective that won't hurt the paint, a few years ago my old battery busted and due to the acid there are little discolored blotches on the front wheel wells and underside of the hood now, (either that or while bleeding the clutch I shot brake fluid out of the resevoir) I'd like to avoid that sort of reaction. I'm not trying to make the bay show-car worthy, but just trying to make things look tidy and pleasant.
I did a similar project with my -ex in her 1800ES. We pulled the engine to swap the transmission. Clean engine... clean transmission... then clean this part... and that part... and the next thing we do is completely strip everything out of the engine bay, complete cleaning, sanding, surface rust treatment with POR15, then primed and repainted everything the original colors. It took about 4 months of nights and weekends over the winter (we had the engine, trans and suspension components in her wood stove heated sunroom). It still looks good 18 years later (I saw the car a couple of months ago), so it was worth the effort but it was definitely a lot of work.
We used POR15 Marine Clean on the engine bay and other components we didn't get sand blasted.
I didn't even know they made something like that, always associated POR15 with rust converter.
In reply to dannyp84 :
Part of making sure POR15 performs as advertised is following the directions - which are a bit more involved than it may appear. For better or worse, my ex- was a stickler for following the directions and while some have complained about POR15 failing, the work she did almost 20 years ago on her car still looks like it was done yesterday.
+1 on marine clean. Best degreaser I've ever used. Spray on and agitate (scrub) with a nylon brush (kitchen/ bath scrubber) and rinse. The power washer alone isn't going to rub off the gunk
DocRob
Reader
4/7/23 12:07 p.m.
Steam cleaner, wire brushes, rags, then the power washer.
I had to clean about 60-years of grease leaking off the steering box on my Sunbeam, in some places it was a quarter inch thick. I took our steam cleaner (a residential-grade Mcculloch), a wire cup brush in my drill, a brass hand brush, and a box of old shop rags and got to work. It took a while, but the steam really loosens the grime up from where it is attached to things and allows it to be brushed loose and then wiped/rinsed away.
