Cleaning / Rust proofing Engine bay.

[cjhillman]

I popped this question in the tech questions but it might have been the wrong place...

I want to clean the engine bay of my Escort, get all the road salt and dirt off, treat the surface rust and coat it in some sort of clear sealant but, i don't really know what??

My ideas of procedures would be to:

- Bag up the Distributor, Fuse box, Coil, Headlights and Battery (disconnected)
- Use a degreser of some sort on everything not protected.
- Borrow pressure washer and bast the engine compartment
- Let it dry
- Use some form of sealant?

A garage told me to keep the engine running but online a lot of people say don't? I just want to make sure it works after as its my only car.

Any ideas, would like to hear how others have done this.

[discostew38]

No easy answer really
I've used waxoil and wd40 on stuff in the past it's good for preventing rust but all the dirt and curse word sticks to it
So it looks a mess and quite hard to get cleaned off

The only way is with time and elbow grease
I recently had the engine out of my car and I cleaned and polished the engine bay
It looked great but a couple of trips out in the rain and it's all dirty now