If your wife won't let you do this, go to your mother's house and tell her you need to check her washing machine.

I unhooked the hot water line for the washing machine and ran the hose with a metal nozle outside to the car, sparayed the undercarriage and engine with Industrial Grade Greased Lightening and rinsed with hot water from the hose. It worked great. It cut the years of oil buildup like nothing I have ever seen.

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1982 300SD Light Blue
2002 Honda Accord SE
1974 Toro Wheel Horse Tractor
2000 Toyota Tundra Pickup

Great idea.

If the water heater is in an ouside cubby/niche/ closet, which is typical here in California, there is a hose bib at the bottom of the heater that you can hook up your hose. This has the advantage of flushing some of the loose scale out of the water heater at the same time.

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The Golden Rule

1984 300SD (bought new, sold it in 1988, bought it back 13 yrs. later)

How does one degrease their engine in an environmentally responsible manner?

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Think Alternative Energy!
300CD '80 (now gone but not forgotten...)

Find someone in the country and do it over their septic tank leaching lines...
I have done this over ours for years.. the grass dies for a couple of weeks.. and comes right back... Remember.. oil is organic..... it is only the Concentration that is a problem for the Enviornment to deal with sometimes...

u guys are freakin nuts.... I thought I was bad when it comes to tearing up things to work on the car

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Audi TT

I used Gunk the first few times to take care of the hard stuff. Now I just use Simple Green every few months and she stays clean.

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2006 CL500
2009 C300 4matic
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

This is a neat idea, so I hate to bust everybody's bubble, but it's really best to spend a couple bucks and do this at a self-serve car wash. After all, their water is usually hot anyway (at least warm) and they're required by local agencies to collect and treat all the drain water. All that gunk coming off our engines is probably like dumping a few quarts of old motor oil right on the ground. Not a good thing. If you do this in your driveway, it will flow through the gutters and storm drains and then into the nearest creek.

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'81 300TD turbo <<sold 12/05 to another diesel nut

Use the pressurized faucet for the hot water line on the washing machine. It gives good pressure. I didn't wash off quarts of oil, just lots of grime. The grass always comes back. No storm drains where I live.

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1982 300SD Light Blue
2002 Honda Accord SE
1974 Toro Wheel Horse Tractor
2000 Toyota Tundra Pickup

You sure don't want used motor oil in your kids drinking water. You really don't want to be eating veggies grown in those carcinogens either. But I guess this should maybe be saved for the general discussions area.

In California, the self-service car washes all have huge signs promising major criminal penalties for washing your engine, they call it "illegal disposal of hazardous materials"

Which leaves me driving around with a filthy engine, and getting oil-soaked every time I wrench on her.

What a drag. I have yet to find a place to legally get her cleaned, and I am open to suggestions....

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Think Alternative Energy!
300CD '80 (now gone but not forgotten...)

You do it in somebody elses yard

If your well taps an aquifer, testing the well water does not tell you what's happening to the ground water. The ground water flows (eventually) into the nearest body of surface water. This has turned into a real problem for marine life (that's fisheries, sports fishing, and the shellfish industry for people who only think in those terms) in these bodies of water.

Tedious, perhaps, but I use paper towels doused with white gas to clean the engine. I know, burning the paper towels is also a problem (for god's sake, wait until the gas has evaporated) but not as bad as another hit on the shellfish and fisheries.

I feel like I am the one responsible for this discussion.
I will commit to be more enviro friendly the next time I do this. Sorry for my enviromental mistake this once.

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1982 300SD Light Blue
2002 Honda Accord SE
1974 Toro Wheel Horse Tractor
2000 Toyota Tundra Pickup

allready tried it a while back. its cold at the bottom. there is a tube that sends the fresh cold water to the bottom. all that comes out is cold/a little warm water

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have no worries.....President Obama swears "If you like your gun, you can keep it