Poor Man's Mods - Cleaning Up Engine Bay

5.0 Ford Guy

Founding Member
Nov 29, 1999
423
35
39
Brownsburg, Indiana
I have been reading through some of these project threads. The money some of these people have just kills me. I am a poor boy with kids so I have very little money to spend. If I buy a $500 part it takes me a couple months to save up for it. So I have to go about modding my Stang a little differently. I just picked up this 94 GT convertible.
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It appears to have been garage kept because the underside is very clean for being a 19 year old car.

The engine compartment is where I plan to start cleaning things up. This is just a start. I plan to remove and replace whatever needs replaced as funds permit. But I just couldn't stand the way the engine bay looked when I popped the hood.
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So I went into the kitchen and stole the wife's cleaning brush.
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And one of the kids' toothbrushes.
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and went to town cleaning everything up.
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What a difference.
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Like I said, this is just a start. I know it's no show car. But it's my car and I love it. It took about an hour of scrubbing everything down to get to this.
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I still need to get the valve covers and some things buried deeper underneath things. But now I shouldn't cringe as badly when I open the hood to continue work on my Stang. Next I plan to start removing components one at a time and do some more thorough cleaning, painting, and polishing.
 
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i always wet the engine bay, warm the engine to operating temp, heavily mist in simple green out of a spray bottle, close the hood and shut it off. leave it for 15 minutes and let the steam clean go to work. rinse it off with water. sometimes i get ugly with a power washer too in hard to reach places.
 
Looks nice :nice:

I got my Mustang in 2002 under the same circumstances (wife, 2 kids, house, career, responsibilities, etc.)
Still have the wife and kids and have moved twice in the last 5 years. Each time to different states.
My car is still not done.
But, it is a long way from where it was when I got it.
Most important thing to do in a long term relationship with your car is to figure out what you want it to be and buy parts accordingly.
I looked for deals on parts I knew would fit into my overall vision for my car.
My first purchase after a short throw shifter were ceramic coated BBK equal length short tube headers.
They weren't needed as a one of my first mods but in the grand scheme they fit perfectly.
I basically had a list in my mind and when I came across deals and had money at the time I bought the parts.
Later I made an excel sheet with an actual list and just start marking things off over the years as I was able to buy them.
I can't believe I've had this car for 12 years now.
It had 64k miles when I drove it off the car lot and now only has 112k miles.
Of course now I have the supercharger installed and the car dyno tuned and both 1/4mile tracks in Phoenix are closed :(
 
Looks nice :nice:

I got my Mustang in 2002 under the same circumstances (wife, 2 kids, house, career, responsibilities, etc.)
Still have the wife and kids and have moved twice in the last 5 years. Each time to different states.
My car is still not done.
But, it is a long way from where it was when I got it.
Most important thing to do in a long term relationship with your car is to figure out what you want it to be and buy parts accordingly.
I looked for deals on parts I knew would fit into my overall vision for my car.
My first purchase after a short throw shifter were ceramic coated BBK equal length short tube headers.
They weren't needed as a one of my first mods but in the grand scheme they fit perfectly.
I basically had a list in my mind and when I came across deals and had money at the time I bought the parts.
Later I made an excel sheet with an actual list and just start marking things off over the years as I was able to buy them.
I can't believe I've had this car for 12 years now.
It had 64k miles when I drove it off the car lot and now only has 112k miles.
Of course now I have the supercharger installed and the car dyno tuned and both 1/4mile tracks in Phoenix are closed :(



did the same thing right down to the sheet with parts i could cross off as i found them. mine went the opposite way, i went back to stock. those parts are like gold, especially if you may want to sell the car in the future. so if you pull stock parts box them and keep them, finding replacements is not easy.