bad-monkey

Underneath my car, the amount of oil-grime-dirt-grease buildup is incredible. I was underneath the car yesterday, scraping away at the stuff for an hour and scraped off a couple lbs worth of gunk on a 2'x2' area. How do you guys generally clean up the bottoms of your cars? I could go to town with a can of degreaser, but waste disposal becomes an issue, last thing i want to be doing is surfing in my own greasy degreaser water runoff...

also, unless my eyes are fooling me, the sound deadening/tar on the bottom of the car is scraping off with the gunk. while that's not necessarily a bad thing, i was under the impression that cockroaches have nothing on the undercarriage coating tar in terms of toughness. Would years of exposure to motor oil, CV grease, and whatever else the Prev. Owner subjected it to bring the tar to it's knees?

and for those without the tar on the bottom of their cars, either by similar circumstance or acid dipping or whatever, how do you deal with rust? primer + tough paint=done?

thanks!

.RJ

Spray everything with simple green and/or engine cleaner and then drive to a car wash and spray it all out

Catch 22

degreaser+Pressure Washer ownz your ***.

I'll bet 5lbs of grease, oil, and dirt came out from under the CRX.
Makes working on it alot more pleasant too.

CRX Lee

Very long periods of time (months or years) with oil contact will soften underbody tar. I have a slightly dribbly front main seal on the ZC that is not bad enough to actually tear into and replace. So each oil change I just lie under the car with paper towel and wipe things down. I still only have a few square inches that have been softened while it has also softened one rubber sway bar bushing as well.

I have never done the big scale undercoat stripping on a Honda. I have done many interiors and a few wheel wells but not a full bottom side. A pressure washer preferably with steam is what I hear is the trick but I haven't figured out how to get the car high enough or how to control what is bound to be a nasty and not too enviro-friendly mess to actually get to that point. For the effort, there is more and higher weight that can still come off the car for me to put that much effort to the undercoating. Don't use the rotary wire brush as I did the fender well, you just get a snoot full of nasty black dust as it comes off slowly and then black boogers for a few days. Bound not to recommended by the American Lung Association.

Formula Racing

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Catch 22 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">degreaser+Pressure Washer ownz your ***.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Bingo!

With 3000 PSI I got all of that crap off and finished it with POR 15. Im surte im saving weight!

thawley

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by CRX Lee &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">A pressure washer preferably with steam is what I hear is the trick but I haven't figured out how to get the car high enough or how to control what is bound to be a nasty and not too enviro-friendly mess...</TD></TR></TABLE>
This has become a real issue here in CA.

Used to be, I'd go to a pressure-washer guy every year after Bonneville (to get the salt off) and he'd put the car up on an outdoor lift, don some rain gear and go to town. Worth every penny. Now a days, they get big, steep fines for letting all that **** go down the drain and out to sea. Haven't had a good steam-clean guy for years. &lt;sigh&gt;

So I've been using the wire wheel intermittently since Oct, and my boogers are indeed very black.