> Anybody know if Gunk heavy-duty engine degreaser will remove engine paint
> along with the grease? I'd rather not find out the hard way.
It doesn't, but there's a better product. It's called, I believe,
Steam Clean (maybe it's STEEM CLEEN). Comes in a black spray can
with silver letters. This stuff is great. It really works into the
crud on your engine, lifts it and makes it easy to spray off. It's
not quite the engine-cleaning equivalent of No-Touch Tire Foam, but
it's close.
There's still no substitute for getting a brush and working the foam
into the cruddy deposits, though that can scratch paint. One tip
that Miq Millman passed on to me is to use whatever engine degreaser
you want, but then, instead of using the garden hose, use a sprayer
loaded with Simple Green to hose off the foam. It's best if you have
an air compressor so you can put on one of those attachments that
lets you get a high-pressure stream from a reservoir of liquid, but
it even works okay if all you've got is the pump sprayer. A spray of
very hot water would help too.
Castrol's engine cleaner ("That Purple Stuff") isn't bad as a light-
duty degreaser. It's good, for example, on garage and driveway stains,
especially if you can work it in with a brush and hose it off with
lots of fresh water. And it has the added benefit of coming in a
pump sprayer rather than an aerosol, so you can refill it later from
a bulk container, let alone feeling smug about not using CFCs.
Note that baked-on engine crud seems to remove a little engine paint
when it finally comes off, no matter how careful you are, so be
advised that you might still expose some of the cast iron (or
whatever your car's block is made from) when you get the old stuff
off. As near as I can tell, the chemical bonds between the paint
and the crud seem to be stronger than the bonds between the paint and
the block. The application of this theoretical observation to the
use of baked-on engine crud as a leak sealer is left to the student.
Of course, if your car is less than 20 years old and has actually
had its engine cleaned once during the previous decades, it might
not be so difficult to get it clean. Ask Tim Pettenati about the
condition of the bottom of The Green Car's engine some time if you
want to learn some new swear words. :-)
--Scott
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