Steam cleaning an engine and under the truck

Simple Green is a great cleaner. It will work on some very nasty crud and build ups. The big thing is to let is spend some time on the crud. spray it on, let it sit a bit, spray again, do this a few times. then hit it with a brush and spray some more.

Might be a good idea to spray the underbelly down before you go to the wash bay.

 

Oil leaks make for a good self rust proofing system

 

In my experience start with a plastic putty knife and manually/mechanically scrape off the really thick hard stuff. Then start in with pressure washers, etc. then for the last bit buy a case of brake cleaner and a box of rags.

 

Man, brake cleaner is expensive how about some kerosene.

 

That is exactly what I did with an older Volvo. I purchased a 5 in1 or a 8 in 1 paint tool scraper from lowes and put on a pair of coveralls and safety glasses. You are going to get dirty. Scrape all the big stuff you can see and feel first. Those pesky electrical lines that are all tied together with wire loom and zip ties are going to take some time. Might be less time to re loom your wires and cut off all the ties. Wire loom in different sizes is affordable on Ebay. If you pressure wash anything electrical you need to take connectors apart and make sure they are dry and put dielectric grease in them or the water that gets in them during pressure wash will cause you other issues down the road from corrosion especially if it is the harness that has the shut down circuits attached. To each his own. I recommend you do your own due diligence here. Nobody is going to work as hard on your truck as you.

 

Use purple power for tough spots. It will remove some nasty stuff.

 

Not sure if they rent them but when I worked for Cat we had a steam cleaner in our wash bay. Not just a regular hot water pressure washer but an actual steam cleaner. I wanna say it was 250+ degrees but low pressure low volume water flow. Man did that thing get the old oil and grease crud off.

 

i rented a self contained steam cleaner on a small trailer for a weekend from an equipment rental place. Think it was sunbelt. It had something like a 200 gallon water tank along with the heater and pressure pump. All on a pull behind trailer that my f150 was more than adequate for. It did a fantastic job and only cost a couple hundred bucks for the whole weekend (a day would be sufficient, that caked on oil and grease is gone in one slow pass). Took a year before the grass grew back in that spot but thankfully cause of the low volume, there wasn't much run off. I'm a bit older now and think before doing things so today is put down plastic sheeting so i didn't poison the lands. While im not a big environmental thinking guy, why poison the land if it only takes a few minutes and 20 bucks to prevent that? Especially important if you have well water or grow a garden.

 

When I blew up a turbo about 3 or 4 years ago my local CAT house washed out my air to air with one of those for no charge. It cleaned it up good ad new absolutely no oil residue. I had spent a lot of hard earned cash there over the years though, for sure, lol.