Cleaning very oily engine

Hello guys and lady’s, I have an oil leak which is soon to be resolved hopefully, my engine bay is quite the oily mess, mostly around the front of the engine, I was thinking of getting a couple of cans of brake cleaner and being careful not to spray any rubber components to clean it off or is this a bad idea? Any advice would be appreciated

Thank you

@dag019 might have a few tips,
Brake cleaner good but a fiver a tin and great for finishing off , if oil mixed with sand or hard crud then it won’t touch it then it’s scraping thick off with screwdriver , for that occasion I’ve used wire brush and paraffin , lot cheaper and as it gets looser a stiff paint brush , on my series I get the Karcher out but the td5 maybe got a lot more sensitive bits

steve2286w said:

@dag019 might have a few tips,
Brake cleaner good but a fiver a tin and great for finishing off , if oil mixed with sand or hard crud then it won’t touch it then it’s scraping thick off with screwdriver , for that occasion I’ve used wire brush and paraffin , lot cheaper and as it gets looser a stiff paint brush , on my series I get the Karcher out but the td5 maybe got a lot more sensitive bits

Click to expand...

Thanks mate, I’m pretty worried about the thought of using pressure washer I’ll try and wipe up the worst of it by hand first

When I got mine I did it with jizer then hose off without the spray nozzle (tried gunk but it was useless just smelt nicer).

Depends what engine you have. Last time I did mine (tdi) I just sprayed it down with screwfix degreaser and hit it with the pressure washer. I am about to do mine again having blown an oil cooler hose!
If you aren’t too worried about the environment you can spray the whole thing down with diesel before pressure washing. But not on a tarmac drive!

For a td5 I agree with the above though. Too electric to just hit with the pressure washer although theoretically everything should be waterproofed and be able to cope With it. Brake cleaner will work but it expensive. I would get a cheap degreaser and maybe put it on with a paintbrush and carefully wash off with a hose?

I sprayed neat screwfix no nonsense degreaser onto my 300 once.

It even (allegedly) started dissolving the white lines on the road.


It must have some caustic stuff in it too as I've soaked extruded alloy in it for weeks before and it goes fuzzy / furry so I'd not use it on mating faces but the outside of an engine is fine.

Brake cleaner is excellent, you may need to spray and work it in with a paintbrush on the heavier stuff, then spray it again.
CTFR is also good, again will need working in.
Aerosol oven cleaner also works.

hello guys thank you all very much for your reply’s, going to start with the brake cleaner and if that doesn’t work try the rest

GSF do a pretty good engine degreaser in aerosol. Not too expensive either. I've just picked up a cheap combo van which is a bit of a mess with old oil leaks and its shifting the heavy stuff nicely.