Engine bay repaint.

[Greedyheron]

Having just spent a few days cleaning the engine bay on my semi trad, the following worked...

Get in engine bay with scraper- put nightmare inducing plates of rust and unidentified crud in bin bag

Pour bilgex and a couple of litres of water into bilge- scrub with brush- get out with wet and dry vac (from Wikes - still going and it's taken a lot of abuse)

Spray jizer fluid around (jizer from screw fix and one of their 99p spray bottles)

Use steam cleaner to clean off jizer- this was semi successful but did result in the gack kind of going everywhere.

Pour a bag of sawdust into the bay and use hands to scrub it around - way more successful than the steam cleaner which kept trying to fall on my head.

Vacuum sawdust out of bilge.

Wait for it to dry- clean engine and other bits with baby wipes- these were the best idea, they remove all known substances, cheap and easy to get hold of and they clean your hands whilst you work.

Use air hose on compressor to get sawdust out of engine bits and blow remaining crud out from bits I couldn't reach ( best to wear goggles)

Then vactan, it was cold so needed a heater to go off, used k rust around diesel pipes as that did not need heating.

 

Now ready to paint ( wish I had thought to clean out the drainage channels above the engine bay first!)

 

When I do it again( will try and keep it clean so it's not so bad) I would pour in bilgex and water and swill around with a long handled brush. Vacuum out. Spray jizer, chuck in saw dust, rub around with a brush. Vac out. Dry, use air compressor and vac again- should do it.

 

All but the scraping could be done from outside the engine bay , although it would be difficult, cant see a way to get the loose rust off without being in there- suggest bribing someone small.

[Tigerr]

Well, I spent Easter in the engine hole. It was very cold and I hope that the various rust conversion and paint will have cured off OK. For the time being though it all looks much cleaner down there in lovely grey danboline. I guess time will tell if it took properly or not.

I have bruises all over from the various sticking out lumps etc so its not a job I want to do again next year.

I can vouch for the fact that any steamer/vacuum used will repeatedly throw itself on your head when doing this job. Thats not so good when its fill of vile liquid.

Sawdust was good - seemed to clean the crud in the bilge very well. I just wish some of it had not hidden itself so well and then mixed into the paint.

[RLWP]

Coo, textured paint - very posh

 

I was wondering about you and your engine bay while boating the frozen lengths of the Caldon Canal (Siberia Arm)

 

Richard