Engine Compartment Cleanliness
 

After looking at this car's engine compartment...
http://www.f7lans.com/rob/bmw/031406/100_1242.jpg
mine needs to be cleaned... bad!... How do you do it? I have used that grease cleaner spray and after using water to rinse it off I ended up with several shot sparkplugs.. nooooo not in my bimmer, but on other cars I have so I decided not to use that stuff ever again... and yes I did cover all the esential electrical parts. Any suggestions?
BTW i hope the owner of this car doesn't mind me using his sex machine's picture.

Check out these guys

http://www.carcareonline.com/viewarticle.aspx?art=4

I use armor all, those wipes are the shit.

you know while on the subject, my valve cover has lost its luster and started to chip off what looks like a protective coating. Anyone got info on refurbishing it, or how to clean that. Degreaser wont help that i dont think.

on a side note it amazes me how similar the engine bay of the e36 looks to the E30. The e46 looks slightly different. I guess that just means they had the right idea the first time.

What?

compare a E30 engine bay to an E36.

that hosing down stuff, even if you cover up all your electronics, ull probably get some water in there, and consering your arent supposed to go to a carwash with an e36 b/c they are notorious for getting water into the ECU, i would just use a rag and same engine decreaser, but wipe it off, dont hose it off(wipe it off with anything, including armor all wipes, like death said)

also, WD40 is a neat trick, it doesnt clean it, but it makes it look amazing

Yup. Take a rag and spray some engine degreaser on it, then start wiping. Works well and you never have to worry about killing electronics. After the degreaser, do the same with some engine dressing, or WD40 I guess, and it will shine like original. NEVER use Armorall on anything. It may clean well but it will chew through connectors and rubber gaskets/trim. It's just not worth it IMO.

As for my valve cover, I sanded and sprayed it black while doing a valve cover gasket job. It made a world of difference compared to the peeling cover.

They filled the e46 with a bunch of plastic covers so it scares the owner, so they don't do their own work on it and take it to BMW. BMW likes doing that. When was the last time you saw a surpentine belt diagram in the engine bay of a BMW?

I think I'll burn all my plastic covers :lol


Doubt this is a 330.. but u get the idea...

http://img55.imageshack.us/img55/451...tengine4tn.jpg

Pretty clean though

Um, right hand drive?

^^ What d'ya know... it is right hand drive

Ok.. how can you tell?

look at where the brake booster is and where the master cylinder is