How to clean engine bay?

[eapcpa]

I dropped the old motor, pulled the oil tank, removed unnecessary lines and hoses, pulled fuse panel, fuel filter console, etc. Loaded on trailer and hosed it down with three cans of Gunk brand degreaser and sprayed it down at the car wash. Must have lost 20 lbs of caked on crud. Now I want to paint the engine bay but I need to clean it further and get the old glue from the old sound pad off. Still a lot of oil residue on the car. Any suggestions on how to proceed. Plan is to paint the engine bay and put the new motor in for spring fun/breakin and later this year pull the motor and tear the body down for rust repair and paint. These are before cleaning.

[Rot 911]

Wipe it down with lacquer thinner.

[David]

I agree with the lacquer thinner or other paint prep product. Just keep wiping and wiping until your rag stays relatively clean after wiping. That's how I prepped to POR15 my engine compartment.

[Richard Burns]

Try Marine clean. It is a POR15 product.

[Brian 162]

I used acetone (lots of it) then sanded the entire engine area. For the sound pad I used a wire brush on a drill to remove the residue. Here is a before and after picture.

One more thing. You have to make sure there is no residual oil on the area to be painted otherwise the oil will seep through the paint. Believe me I know.

[the]

There is a product called Oil Eater that is awesome for cleaning that kind of grime.

[eapcpa]

Thanks for the response guys. Brian, your before looks like mine and the after looks like where I am trying to get to. Since this is my busy season, roughly how long did it take but just as important, how much beer. Do you count by hours or beers?

[Brian 162]

It took about 3 weeks working a couple of hours at a time.The biggest mistake I did was when I painted the engine bay I didn't clean all the oil residue so the oil seeped through.
I then had to strip all the paint with acetone.
As for the beer factor my garage has no heat and it's been pretty cold up here so that has been slowing me down.

[eapcpa]

Brian, thanks for the response. Cold weather/cold beer. hmm.. Im not seeing a problem, you set the beer down (or ale up there I guess) and when you get back to it it is still cold. Cool!! no pun intended Just kidding, must be a biotch to get the paint to dry. I use an inexpensive propane bullet heater when it gets below freezing outside and shut it down after a few minutes. Just replaced the garage door with a triple layer insulated door and it made a huge difference over the old wood door. Any temp outside down to just above freezing and I can stay above 50 in the shop without heat.

[Brian 162]

I'm in the HVAC industry but I'm too lazy to instal a unit heater. I used construction lights with 1000 watt bulbs to dry the paint. It worked pretty good.