I bought various cleaning supplies this past week (wash bin, brushes, etc.) and started degreasing parts this morning. I've been researching the best way to clean the parts, especially the aluminum CFI intake, but couldn't come to any real answers. The Internet was full of contradictions about what to use and what not to use. For every post where someone said to use Simple Green, Easy Off, Berrymans, etc. there was an equal number of posts warning against those things or that they just didn't work.
The one thing people did seem to agree on was dish detergent -- Palmolive and Dawn specifically. Palmolive appeared to have a bigger following, so that got the call.
I really had no idea how to approach this, so I started out by soaking pieces and then using my wire brush to scrub. This didn't work too well. The soap seemed to soften the grease well enough but the brush just ended up smearing it around on the part.
Next, I just tried pouring the soap right on the grease and scrubbing it in with the brushes. This worked marginally better but was still a lot of effort.
I finally got fed up (or smart, depending on your point of view) and fired up my Costco power washer. It has a siphon for pulling in cleaning agents, so I filled the wash bin with a heavy concentration of soap, stuck the siphon in there and blasted the parts with the soap & water mixture.
This worked well -- really well.
The siphon on my power washer only works with a lower pressure nozzle (which makes sense -- higher pressure nozzle will strip paint off if you're not careful). After hitting the parts with the lower pressure Palmolive and water, I changed to a higher pressure nozzle for the rinse cycle. This became the routing for everything else. After the rinse, I still had to use my brushes to get into the small areas and spaces where the grease was really on thick, but this was way better and faster than scrubbing the whole part by hand.
So -- I cleaned up the various accessory brackets, pulleys, intake manifold (bottom and top cover), valve covers, oil pan and the timing cover.
I also cleaned up the spark plug heat shields, the heat riser on the driver exhaust manifold and other aluminum bits with some steel wool, more Palmolive and the small brass brush. The aluminum pieces cleaned up amazing in my opinion.
Finally, I used my drill and a small wire wheel to clean up the exhaust manifolds. It was mostly just knocking off some minor scale. I plan to paint the manifolds using some high-temp paint from Eastwood, so this was really a prep job more than anything.
In the end, it didn't feel like I got much done today, but looking at the before and after pictures, I'm pretty happy with the results. Palmolive gets my vote.
And it's really nice to pick up parts and not end up with a giant blob of grease and oil all over your hands or work gloves.