One of the fun jobs of owning a mil-veh is the occasional degreasing required
for all those hard to reach places in the engine compartment, back of wheels
and under carriage. Over the years I have tried all sort of things from
gasoline to a high dollar steam cleaner. Obviously, a steam cleaner wins,
but not a lot of us are privileged such a luxury.
As a shade tree type mechanic, I found that plain old kerosene followed up by
soapy water works rather well. You can buy the off the shelf type spray
engine cleaners, but I have not noticed any improvement and those
applications typically cost 3 times what a spray bottle filled with kerosene
costs.
If you have a large area to cover, such as a tranny or even the entire under
carriage, you might consider soaking the area to be cleaned for several hours
with a few squirts of kerosene before washing down. If I want to do a first
rate job, I use a long handle brush with 4 inch bristles to reach into a lot
of crevices and corners, the results have been impressive. Makes a tough job
go pretty fast too. Just finished doing the entire bottom of my GMC, only
1.5 hours, including the soak in time, but had the help a 2300 psi pressure
washer too!
I would like to hear your suggestion for cleaners, but I want to ad one last
tidbit, please never use gasoline! It works, but it's not worth the risk and
it is not nearly as environmentally friendly as those water soluable cleaners.
Jack
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Sep 02 2001 - 11:15:37 PDT