I need good tips on how to do it, and what to use to clean a very, very dirty engine bay.

Just so you guys know, this is how dirty it truly is:


.. yeah, so what should I use?

 

my camaro was like that when i bought it, i used FOAMING (not gel) engine brite, right off the shelf at walmart, and let it sit for 10 mins, then blew it off with the high pressure from a hose, cover your distributor with a plastic bag and your air filter element, or put in a old one. worked good for me, do it twice if you want perfection. i usually start my car and let it idle for about 20 minutes after to let all of the excess standing water burn out, then after all that it looks kinda dull, hit the whole mother with ARMOR ALL! shine that baby up.
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even better, ive also used the high pressure car wash guns...with the engine brite.

 

Yeah, sorry, that can't be saved.

No no no.....seriously, it looks more like it's just dirty as opposed to seriously greased and oily. The process 1988CamaroSC describes really should work very well for you. The only other thing I would recommend would be to tape off the edges of the fenders and nose of the car and hang plastic bags over the body parts you don't get any harsh degreaser on the paint. Just use wide blue painters tape to hold the plastic on and you'll be fine.

 

Mine looked nearly the same on my camaro (the black/dirty color) when I got it.
I didn't even want to touch it to do the tune-up it so badly needed.
$1.25 at the car wash later (not technically legal anywhere to do)...

 

I work for a Auto Detail shop thats been around for 19 years so here is what we do. Nothing facny, Dont need to cover car or nothing. Just get any degreser like the purple stuff from autozone or whatever, cover the distributor ( we use old metal license plates so you and bend it to cover ) then just saturate the motor, and everthing you want clean, take a wash mit and rub down anything you can like the painted surfaced such as the inner fenders, etc. Then you really need a preasure washer, just black the crap outa the motor just dont spray right on the distributor or sparkplugs. We do this all the time at work and they always turn out nice. They let the car run until its all dry, the motor running speeds this up. If its really bad do it all over again, but once its try take a good spray dressing ( just like you would use on your tires ) and spray everything, it really make it all look glossy and new, wipe off extra dressing and enjoy a clean motor, if ya got chrome to deal with, any way or pollish with fine steel wool will clean it up nice, try and post pics when done and let me know how it turns out! PS If ya done have a pressure washer, take it to the self car wash and use theirs.

 

yeah with everyone because thats what I did and it looks a million times better. I will post some before and after pics!

 

Sorry I couldnt post the clean pic it wouldnt let me. Well it looks alot better