My car is not horribly bad under the hood just dirty in the cracks and creveses. I was thinking of just hitting it with the pressure washer and using a dressing but I dont want it all glossy underneath, just clean. I've heard to wash it down and use laquer thinner on the hoses and such and wipe everything else down with a detail cleaner. Just want to get ideas on what everyone else has done in the past and what I can and cant get wet underneath. I dont want to cause any problems with the electronics.

 

Purple Power and lots of elbow grease to get it clean, then you can use a water based product called Black-on-Black from Chemical guys for all the hoses and plastic.

 

I've never used any chemicals aside from car soap. Every time I wash the car I take a sponge and dip it into a bucket of car soap/water and ring the sponge over the engine bay.

I then take the sponge, and with JUST water, do the same thing again. I use a shop vac to blow dry everything clean. My '02 Camaro had 100k and the engine bay looked like the day I bought it from the dealership.

However, since you are just starting out, I used Dawn and soap when my engine was out and went to town. I washed it 3 complete times before everything was as clean as it was going to be. Like I said, I'm not a fan of using the shiny detailing stuff under the hood; it ends up dripping and streaking.

You can check out my build thread in my signature to see the before and after.