Auto Detailing: Dress an Engine

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Dow with the Fire House Car Wash Detail Center. We are teaching you today how to detail your engine compartment like a professional. We have now gone through and we've cleaned it, we've degreased it, we've dried it. One of the final steps we like to do as a professional detail shop is dress up the engine. If you are happy with it just being clean, that's fine. You can pretty much be done at this stage but what we like to do now is so when someone has that wow factor when they open up the hood to look at their engine, the black areas, the hoses, it is nice to have a nice shiny good look. It just makes it pop. It makes it look professional. It makes it look like it did when you open it on the factory show room or in the show room and looked at that engine. The dressing that we prefer to use is a silicone based water base dressing and in this application we actually water it down to about 50/50 solution and water. You don't need it as strong as you do when you are dressing the outside of the car or tire because there are other areas and we take it again in a spray bottle with a good sprayer that allows us to go upside down, angles and we just start in on a nice fan and we just start coating the engine from top to bottom, paying particular attention to the wide areas like this, belts, and you don't want to put any silicone, however, on belts. Belts will slip, they'll slide, they'll make noise. So you want to avoid any belts. Your serpentine belts, your alternator belts, your other belts keep the dressing away from that but feel free to put it on the electrical parts, hoses, plastic housings, those other areas and it won't cause any damage. I like to make sure we put it on the battery, you know other areas like that. Just coat the engine, the hoses, housing, air filter housing. This really is what makes it look great, just kind of spread it across the whole engine and that's all we have to do unless you want to do a little bit of touch up. You know if there is an area that we got on a little thick you can go in and get a quick wipe down to those areas that you didn't want it on. Then at that point when we are finished dressing the engine and we are going to also remove the protective coatings because again we don't want the dressings in the alternator or other areas. We can go ahead and take the plastic protective coatings off and we've got a nice dressed engine and it looks great. It has got that appearance that we wanted which is that showroom like new look and the wow factor that we're all looking for."