how to clean old crud from bottom of car

[Mike D'Silva]

my 06 Cayman has old dirt underneath.. all the nice aluminium bits aren't shiny, but brown with dirt.

My domestic pressure cleaner took off a small amount... but what's a good way to get the really old stuff off?

 

Do you use a spray on cleaner that breaks it down then hoses off??

[Caver]

WD40 is the magic element....check out earlier posts....started on cleaning wheels....moved to cleaning underneath.

 

[tazzieman]

Crud is protective!

Ask any Land Rover owner 

You're not going all concours on us are you?

[Mike D'Silva]

so it seems that what I thought was crud, was actually applied by the factory to protect from corrosion????

[T-Man]

Cosmoline is your protective freind!!!!!

Back when the 993s were made Porsche must have bought a ton of it.

I reckon I could drop 50kg of weight off the car if I got rid of it all.

[Russ]

Yep, if its a waxy brown thing its a factory applied protection

[1977930]

Im sure handling and performance is improved with a clean car,

would be interesting if you did a 0-60 before and after and let us know

[jnr356]

if you want it off,do it now ,because in a few years time it will be baked on and very difficult to remove.

i used to remove it on pre-deliveries,most other tech's didn't.

the salt on the ships used to leave white speckles on components not covered in wax,sometimes tops of engines had salt affected areas.

great fun working on suspension,g/boxes, etc with it still on,free hair removal

for removal of dirt stains and mild oil leaks i use a product called G101 from a company called autosmart(just be careful of wheels and paint,can stain raw ally eg forged 928 rims and will strip the polish off your exterior paint ,prevented by "sudsing up" beforehand)

[Chris-p]

+1 on the G101. A very close friend was the Australian master franchise owner of autosmart and I have used it a lot and can recommend. But Caver's recommendation on WD40 is a good one too...

C