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Removing massive amounts of grease and grim

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Patton

Patton

Jedi Warrior
Offline
I had to pull the radiator in the Healey last week to replace the water pump and thought that I would start working to clean off the years of caked on grease and grime on the engine and the suspension while I had the extra access.

I rolled the car out in the driveway, and liberlly coated everything with degreaser, and very little came off. I recoated it again, let it sit for 15 minutes, then got out my pressure washer, and all I did was get grease splater everywhere. Basically I wasted 2 hours.

I want to address this again before I put the radiator back on. I need to have this car clean enought that I can work on it without getting covered in grease. I am also starting to think I will go ahead and clean VERY good and paint and detail the engine bay as good as I can with the engine in the car.

Any suggestions as to the degreasing part? What do you use?

Patton
 
Are you doing this with a hot engine? Oops. Obviosuly not with the radiator out. Stupid me.

Sometimes it is just a matter of a putty knife and taking off as much of the thick stuff as possible, then use a good degreaser. I had to do that with 4 wire wheels that had "2 feet" of grease on them.

I now use what is called a dirt buster nozzle and it really blows away everything. Try to thoroughly cover what you don't want to get wet with perhaps an old shower curtain and duct tape or a strong tape so the washer does not blow water and dirt all over the place.

Steam cleaning is also good but you really have to be careful where that hot steam blows. It gets into everything and not good for starters, generators etc. You can usually rent a steam cleaner if a rental place is near you.
 
Patton, were you running hot water through the pressure washer? I have found that helps some, but I think Bruce is right, and it's putty knife time in places.
Jeff
 
Scrape off everything you can. Then use a very strong degreaser but be very careful about what it seeps into. I use a product called "Liquid Dynamite". For normal grimey situations I use Simple Green undiluted. If you have access to hot water that would help greatly. Good luck!
 
[ QUOTE ]
Patton, were you running hot water through the pressure washer? I have found that helps some, but I think Bruce is right, and it's putty knife time in places.
Jeff

[/ QUOTE ]

Just curious - is that safe for washer? My pump gets rather hot as it is and the manufacturer stated not to let it get too hot. Just wondering?

Had a wild thought - a heat gun directly on the grease and then degreaser if one can not heat the engine.
 
I tried Flitz for some grease and it seemed to work pretty good.
 
Bruce, I have run mine with just the household hot water and have never had any problems with it. I never run it for long intervals, probably not more than two or three minutes at a time. The pump doesn't seem overly hot, and it still works great.
Jeff
 
Jeff - that may be the difference. I think I have run mine longer sometimes and I do not have great water pressure and volume which can also hurt.

Bruce
 
Bruce:
What's the water quality like down there? Any minerals in the fresh water that could contribute to the pump heating up?
I've never been to the Antilles. I could use a good dive trip this winter!
Jeff
 
Water is probably the purest there is. Distilled from clean clear saltwater. I think the washer heats up because of slightly less volume. Washer works great though. Plus the water going in is probably 85 to 90 degress to start and not 50 degrees or less!!!

Not advertising here but Bonaire has some of the best diving in the world. And only one Jaguar on the island (not mine). No other LBC's here. Sorry yes - one Mini (not mine).

One Miata and one Porcshe 914 (neither mine) plus a multitude or other unintersting cars/trucks.

Bruce
 
[ QUOTE ]
Water is probably the purest there is. Distilled from clean clear saltwater. I think the washer heats up because of slightly less volume. Washer works great though. Plus the water going in is probably 85 to 90 degress to start and not 50 degrees or less!!!

Not advertising here but Bonaire has some of the best diving in the world. And only one Jaguar on the island (not mine). No other LBC's here. Sorry yes - one Mini (not mine).

One Miata and one Porcshe 914 (neither mine) plus a multitude or other unintersting cars/trucks.

Bruce

[/ QUOTE ]

And here was I thinking that the island would be crawling with Mini-Mokes!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif I have visited Bruce's website, and that certainly looks like a tiny slice of paradise to me.
 
[ QUOTE ]
And here was I thinking that the island would be crawling with Mini-Mokes!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif I have visited Bruce's website, and that certainly looks like a tiny slice of paradise to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

There were Mokes and Mini's in rental many years ago. You have only one guess as to what happend to all of them in a very short time. Remember - island, salt water, salty atmosphere... some hints.
 
more of the same here, but when i was degreasing 2.5 ton truck i had to scrape most of it off, then sprayed degreaser all over it. I scrubbed it with a stiff brush and powerwashed it off. Came out clean but it was a lot of work. Though this is an old military truck, and you can imagine how bad that could be
 
Scrape first- the more you remove physically the faster and the less there is to foul your cleaning solution.

A wire brush too can get into the nooks and crannies that a scraper might not reach.

The heat gun is good too, I've used those for undercoating so normal road grime should soften up nicely.

I've also found that soaking a rag in solution and wrapping that around the dirty part overnight can help too.
 
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