Ok, i have the engine almost leak free 
when i finish the job on either thursday or friday, i want to give the engine a bit of a cleanup and a degrease, as i want to be able to spot any
future leaks before the drive gets them 
so basically - does anyone have any tips on cleaning a very greasy/dirty twink?
Take a screw driver or something and scrap off the worst sludge. Then use a degreaser after that.
Steam...
Further to cleaning the block. Any good products for cleaning the ally bits? I've got a set ot throttle bodies to clean but don't want to completely disassemble them as they're nicely balanced at the mo.
I've always found that cream cleaner is good for degreasing components (the sort you use for cleaning an oven), it's really cheap and does the job quite well with a bit of elbow grease. You have to take care with aluminium components, if you leave it on too long it will start to eat the aluminium. That said I managed to clean up an aluminium cylinder head with it with no problems. Just be careful with aluminium!
Alloy wheel cleaner for the the alluminium bits followed by a pressure wash. 
White Spirit or Paraffin is the best degreaser I've found. For less severe cases use Autoglym Engine Cleaner.
Paraffin is what we used, a brush, scrapper and ellbo grease... worked a treat..
But once you have striped all the oil fixed the oil leaks expect it to rust in places, oil leaks have there uses...
Nothing beats MR muscle oven cleaner, superb at cleaning engines, gearboxs, etc. Its not too bad at ovens either.
Where gloves though cause the stuff burns your skin leaving it dry and red.
quote:
Originally posted by Bluemoon
Paraffin is what we used, a brush, scrapper and ellbo grease... worked a treat..
But once you have striped all the oil fixed the oil leaks expect it to rust in places, oil leaks have there uses...
quote:
Originally posted by Monkeybasher
Nothing beats MR muscle oven cleaner, superb at cleaning engines, gearboxs, etc. Its not too bad at ovens either.
Where gloves though cause the stuff burns your skin leaving it dry and red.
I have always washed my engines with petrol and a brush ... followed with some precision parts cleaner...
and this is now the part when everyone tells me the error of my ways ..
Andrew
We've cleaned ours (and the chassis) so many times, damn that leaky Crossflow. We use degreaser and a pressure washer, does a cracking job.
Don't bother cleaning it. Get it ripped out and weighed in for the scrap value and stick a shiny new bike engine in it. 
what would you want to do that for ??
Car engines get to go faster around corners !