[s-cars] cleaing the engine bay

[Steve Powers]

Matt -

> I have a pretty clean engine bay but I didn't use a hose to wash it. I tried
> that once before and ended up with a failed POS due to the "steam" that came
> off of the engine parts. If you know how much those things cost, you'll
> think twice about spraying water in there.

I've got news for ya - it didn't fail because of "steam". Your POS
failed due to other problems. Your engine compartment sees plenty of
"steam" during rainy weather. If it failed as you suspect, there
wouldn't be any Audis running out here in the Pacific NorthWet.

I clean mine regularly with water and S100 (Simple Green sort of
stuff). It looks fine and is pretty easy to do.

> I first cleaned it using an entire tube of Armor-All cleaning wipes (for all
> the metal, hoses, plastic, and rubber), and then made all the plastic look
> like new using a few Armor-All protectant wipes. The hoses all look great
> now and are probably less prone to cracking as a result. It takes an hour or
> two to do it all, but after you do it once, you only need to spend about 10
> min going over the major stuff every car wash to keep it that way.

It probably looks very nice. I just don't have that sort of time to
put into making it look that way.

Steve Powers
Seattle