Steam cleaning?

[Coxy]

Anyone steam cleaned their engine bay? Any dos or donts?

Also anyone bought a cheap steamer off eBay and any good?

[tadunce]

People doing steam cleaning of engine bay (if I understand well what the steam cleaning is) before technical inspection in our country if engine is leaking oil.

On the other hand it must be quite good for your engine, because oil on your engine car raise the temperature a little. It isn't very good. But it must be tones of oil on the engine to happen.

[steve_earwig]

Years back steam cleaning used to be "the thing" for tarting up an oily engine bay, usually followed by selling it quick before the oil returned. It involved putting a bag around the distributor and drying the distributor out afterwards anyway. These days, with the amount of electronics under the bonnet I wouldn't recommend it.

So...
Do - shield everything electronic with plastic.
Do - try to avoid spraying anything electronic.
Don't - expect it to run right afterwards.

You'd be better off waiting for a nice hot day (that'll be in July if you get one at all), filling up one of those squirty spray bottles with Gunk or Jizer (the appetizer), squirting it around under the bonnet and working it in with a brush where you can get to it, leaving it for an hour then washing it off with as small an amount of water as possible.