What substance do you use to clean an engine block? When I purchased my engine, it was not pressure cleaned and it looks gritty (saltwater from shipping?) from something.

Thanks

 

Just depends on what kind of 'dirty' it is. If its just dirt/grease/gunk you can use simple green which most ppl will suggest. If its somthing a little harder to clean you might want to consider stripping the block down and take it to get sandblasted.

 

Castrol Superclean cleaner/degreaser and a brush has always worked well for me

 

Carb Cleaner

 

oh yeah simple green

 

if it is just a block(no pistons, crank, etc...) hot tank it. not only does it clean the outside it gets inside too. Its not too expensive.

 

be careful with the Castrol product. I have some nice stain marks on my intake from when i used it to clean my valve cover. I guess some had splashed on the intake and it did some damage

 

Thanks for the responses. It's not from grease or anything rather some sort of grayish oxidation on the block. I don't know what it is, but it needs to come off, makes the block/intake manifold look like ****.

 

I know this may sound dumb, but I had the same **** on my motor. What I did was use simple green to get all the road grime and oil off the block and painted it a 1500 high heat aluminum paint. Thing looked pretty good, if you like a shiny block.

My$.02

 

Try Castrol Superclean wheel cleaner. I used that wheel cleaner and a brush once on some oxidized Aluminum parts. It worked out farily well.

 

it never fails to pressure wash too!! One of my favorite tools!!