I've wanted to bling up the engine bay since the day I brought the car home and finally got prompted to this afternoon as I fixed the under-cladding on the bonnet. It was now hanging by a thread and I don't want to chuck it so decided to stick it back up with some aluminum tape. This is great stuff that can be moulded to the underside of the bonnet and its heat-resistant so it won't come loose sat next to the engine.
I started by cleaning the dirt and grease away from a small patch for the tape to stick to, but soon got carried away and ended up polishing the entire underside of the bonnet. I wiped the whole area down with a damp towel, getting rid of the surface dirt but leaving large oily swirls, so I used a mixture of Carb Cleaner and WD40 to cut the grease and get it shiny. Its now a million miles from the tatty mess it was this morning... though it'll shitty up again before you can blink!
The aluminum-tape also served another useful purpose in properly fixing the grille in place - I ran a strip of it along the back of the grille holding it to the slam panel.
The actual reason I chose this rather than screwing through the broken clips is because I've seen a 'Cooling Panel' from GReddy that bridges this same gap behind the grille.
It's made of carbon-fibre and will set you back £145 from Flat4Online.co.uk! [here if you don't believe me] In their words this "increases the amount of air going through the radiator leading to cooler engine temperatures". I'd argue that mine is even better at doing that and cost sweet FA! [tape filched from work of course] The shiny tape also looks cool so while I was at it I smothered the flaking V-belt cover too! [eat your heart out SpecR XD]
Anyway, what good is all this on a grubby engine? I now began the laborious task of cleaning the mechanical stuff [deeper than I have before] and am impressed with the results!
I first removed all the dirt filler-caps and gave them to my dad, who very kindly bathed them in white-spirit and painstakingly brushed the grease from the detailing - they're now reflecting the flash!
I then used more turps to clean the crud off every pipe, hose, wire and lead, as well as the cam-cover, radiator, intercooler, everything... I then rubbed tyre-dressing into all of the black rubber-hoses to get them looking a bit fresher.
As a finishing touch I took the dump-valve off for a polish, but most importantly to turn it round so the Bailey logo is facing out!
Very surprising that the Demon Tweeks mechanic would fit it like that - unprofessional I think, because any person shallow enough to buy a loud, hissing dump-valve would want to see the logo!
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