Engine room cleanup

[Trojan]

What does the lye do to the wiring and hoses and such? Could you leave it in the bilge for a few days?

BILL

 

[Boss Lady]

Lye is a caustic, it is very aggressive and should do its job in a few minutes. You should also properly dispose of it. You can't just pump it overboard.

It can and does remove paint. You should read up on this before using it. Oven cleaner that has lye in it is a milder version. Do one section at a time, use a bristle brush for stubborn spots and a sponge to lift up the residue as you go. You will know immediately if you get some on your skin. Wear protective equipment, goggles, rubber gloves, and a respirator. Do small areas, you cannot just spray the whole thing. and come back later. This is elbow grease time, if you have some subborn spots.

I would use one of the detergents for the bilge and the oven cleaner for the engine.

 

[Passages]

What does the lye do to the wiring and hoses and such? Could you leave it in the bilge for a few days?

BILL

Lye or caustic such as contained in oven cleaner would not hurt hoses or wiring during the course of normal degreasing. I would not leave it on for weeks on end but for short durations followed by a good rinse would not be a problem.

What you need to be really careful with is strong petroleum or chlorinated solvents such as brake cleaner. This will dissolve plastics & rubber and should be used sparingly.

 

[Paul45c]

I've got a question about the Tide -- when I heard that this is what LuckyDave used on his engine room, I was sold! And it smells nice in the ER. The problem is have is that slimy residue it seems to leave. Well, maybe residue isn't the right word, but the stuff just feels like it never rinses off fully. You know, if you have some of the powder on your fingers it feels like you could 1500 psi pressure wash them and you'd still feel like slick fingers.

Is this a prob in the bilges?

 

[Passages]

I've got a question about the Tide -- when I heard that this is what LuckyDave used on his engine room, I was sold!

Good point. Whatever Dave is using, it works.

 

[34Hatt]

I use the purple stuff from home depot mixed with a little kerosene.

I use the Zep degreaser I think this is the same it comes under Zep as Zepride E and in the Dumpo it is Zep purple cleaner. Been using it for 20 years Great stuff use gloves it sucks all the oil out of everything including your skin!!!

 

[yachtsmanbill]

So after spending an hour putting away tools from the last foray, I wanted to start cleaning in earnest. Earlier, I washed and vacuumed ALL THE BILGES 3 times just to get down to strata layer one.Today, I took BOSSLADY's advice and got some TIDE. GUNKED everything first, then mixed some TIDE and DAWN in a squirt bottle and douched it real good. After that sat for a while, in a few places I covered it again with oven cleaner as a test.
This time instead of a hose, I used my little 1500psi 110vac pressure washer. Shorter wand , easier control, and it doesnt blow debris all over the kingdom! All the crap emulsified, and got pumped on the dirt, then vacuumed dry. Its clean enough that I can wipe it with a solvent rag and paint it. Washed the 12s and generator also. ws

 

[yachtsmanbill]

Just some more shots under the engines and bilge drains etc. The black stuff is where the paints gone and raw F-glass is showing. ws

 

[yachtsmanbill]

Well stick a fork in me cawz I'm done! One lousy clean finger from the squirt bottle! ws

 

[Boss Lady]

Wild Willy, you gots to show the "before" and after pictures. LOL I know the old Sub had a good coat of grease below decks.

 

[yachtsmanbill]

Like these??? ws

 

[Boss Lady]

where be the before pictures? LOl you having a senior moment?

 

[yachtsmanbill]

oops! ws

 

[luckydave215]

Tide and water (and elbow grease) does it, guys.
No flammable risk, no caustic wiring damage, and once most of the oil is gone, you can pump the rest overboard (biodegradable).
It doesn't eat rubber, paint, varnish, or hands, cause blindness or wreck your lungs, and you can even spill some on leather upholstery without it being an instant tragedy.
If you're getting a slimy residue, (it doesn't rinse completely) you have hard water and need a doskside water softener, just like in the laundry machine at home.

 

[Boss Lady]

Dave, 30 years of oily bilge slime from a yacht is different than than the bilge slime when your yacht has been neglected and is more like a work boat bilge. sometimes requires something more than Tide. Like a pressure washer and oven cleaner. It took 2 guys, 3 full days with a 3000 psi pressure washer, detergent, and scrapers to clean the bilge on Boss Lady. Look at the pictures on the website.

Chris

 

[SteelinGA]

I would never use simple green in my engine room. Simple green causes hydrogen embrittlement on high strength steel, like your engine bolts. I worked in the Air Force Corrosion Program Office for 4 years and we went nuts trying to get crew chiefs to quit using that unauthorized stuff on aircraft. It is industrial floor cleaner; Of course it works well as a degreaser, but it should never be used on high strength steel or aluminum. I have three primary cleaners on my boat: Orange cleaner (409), Isopropyl Alcohol, and if I'm cleaning something I'm going to paint or seal, methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) which you can get at Lowes. MEK is the best for pre-paint prep, but you have to be very well ventilated to use it, as it is an explosive hazard. MEK will dissolve/strip single part paints, but as a quick wipe it activates them to be very adherent to the next coat.

I bought a 1965 41c last year and when it was up on hard getting the bottom redone and some exhaust risers replaced, the mechanic kept griping about how he "cleaned my engine room a little each day" meaning his clothes getting filthy every time he went in there. Knowing that a dirty engine room means slow service (the mechanic can't go work in a new boat after my boat, so he only schedules work in there towards the end of the day) I finally relented and we washed the room out. Pulled all the hatches. Used a bug sprayer to apply orange cleaner, let it soak in a few minutes, then hit the area with a small pressure washer. Pumped out the residue which flowed into the boatyard's catch basin. It wasn't perfect, and I'll have to do something better when I go in there to repaint, but it worked out good for this year, and I don't have any fear that I corroded anything with that orange solvent. My battery charger didn't work right for a month, tho...

 

[Boss Lady]

MEK is a known carcinogen. We used a lot of dangerous chemicals in the military and they never told us how bad they were for our health.

 

[jim rosenthal]

Frankly I think we are better off using soap-based cleaners and more elbow grease. The idea of getting in a confined space like the engine room and using volatile cleaners that will get in your lungs and circulation gives me the creeps. These chemicals end up in your liver and brain, not to mention other organs. This stuff isn't good for you. Unless you have no brain cells left anyway, like me.

StarBrite makes an orange gel bilge cleaner (WM used to sell it, but stopped; I don't know if it isn't available or WM just decided to knock it off and sell their own me-too product). I've used it to clean the bilge and it works great. Cleaning an engine room is a miserable job- you can't get to everything, it takes days and days, you get banged up and cut and sore, etc etc. Not to mention all the "extra" parts you find in there, requiring you to do things over where you thought you had it all put back where it was supposed to be. Right.

I like the Tide idea and will try that. I have to say that regular spraying of the engine room working parts with WD40 and CorrosionX has helped a lot. Yes, things are a bit greasy but they don't rust and flakes of metal don't fall off them.

Finally, I was cautioned years ago about steam-cleaning or pressure-washing the engine area of a Hatteras; the dirty water finds its way down in to the keel below the engine room floor. It can't come out of there once it is in there; there is no way for it to evaporate or get vented out. Many of these older boats have water sloshing around in the hollow keel.

 

[SteelinGA]

MEK is a known carcinogen. We used a lot of dangerous chemicals in the military and they never told us how bad they were for our health.

Methyl Ethyl Ketone (MEK) is not a carcinogen. That's a common misconception. It is regulated as a Hazardous Air Pollutant. Why? Because it's atmospheric half life (the amount of time it takes for 50% of evaporated MEK to react chemically in the atmosphere) is very short, about 2-3 days. That means it will tend to react in the local area. It reacts with NOx emissions from autos to form Ozone, (smog), which is a lung irritant. The reason it is regulated by the EPA is so that manufacturing processes such as aircraft painting operations don't cause smog. Not because it is carcinogenic to the workers.

Acetone (dimethyl Ketone) is very similiar to MEK, but it's atmospheric half life is greater than 30 days, so the EPA doesn't even regulate it's use. But Acetone evaporates much faster than MEK making a poor wipe solvent and paint thinner. Also, Acetone is more dangerous explosively.

MEK is toxic (not carcinogenic) to the central nervous system, same as that bottle of whiskey on your shelf. So if you inhale too much of it you'll get a bit loopy. Again, use very good ventilation.

I worked for 4 years developing substitutes for MEK for the Air Force, and during that time developed a great appreciation for how many uses that chemical has. Knowing that the basis for MEK's deletion from AF tech manuals had to do with smog in cities rather than any worker health or ozone depleting effect, I bought a gallon of the stuff a few years ago and I still have some left. It's good stuff.

 

[Maynard Rupp]

Our company's medical department did a survey of our aircraft maintainence dept. for unsafe materials. The first thing they removed was our barrell of MEK. athey gave us a replacement which works great. 3M adhesive remover is the product. It is available at many marine stores. Although it is sold for removing tape adhesives like you get from duct tape. It works well for that and seems to duplicate and exceed all the jobs that MEK was used for. It is also OSHA approved and is mostly harmless to humans. Try it for cleanup, I think you will like it.