How to clean the underside of your car; The Easy Off Challenge

How to clean the underside of your car.

The traditional cleaning method for your greasy underside has been steam cleaning, media blasting, or for the really messy spaying on Gunk or some similar product. Our Project Barn Find AMX had 12 years of grime on it but had a very sound and relative clean underside. We had always heard that Easy Off Oven Cleaner was a better grease cleaner than Gunk and similar automotive products. Personally, I have found Gunk and similar products nearly worthless.

I went to the local grocery store and picked up two cans of Easy Off at $6 per can and two cans of generic oven cleaner at $2 per can. How will they do? How do they compare? Should they go in the “do not buy trash can”?

Phase 1 was the initial power wash.

Our approach was to knock off the worst of the dirt and grime with an initial power wash. No need to waste the products on dust! We went over the entire car with a power washer only, no soap or any degreaser; just good old water. The results were remarkable, but remember this car had not been on the road since 1981. However, it was driven from 1969 until parked in 1981. That is still 12 years of regular everyday usage.

Phase 2 was all about the “Oven Cleaner” Challenge.

The second power wash of the engine bay and underside was preceded by a liberal application of oven cleaner. We purchased 4 cans for the cleanup on our AMX. We used two cans of the expensive Easy Off and two cans of some generic oven cleaner that costs one third the price of Easy Off. We sprayed one half the underside with one and one half with the other using the drive shaft tunnel as the dividing line.  We used one and one-half cans of the respective product on each area of the car. Before I give the results away check out the photos below.

Easy On…

We spayed anything that hinted of grease or oil.

Since the engine bay is also going to be completely repainted we were not worried about the oven cleaner damaging the paint. However, you should use caution. We let ours sit overnight and it did remove paint better than some paint removers we have tried!

We really laid it on under the car. Surprisingly, there was not a large amount of oil and grease under the car but we are going to get rid of all of it.

The differential was probably the dirtiest part of the entire car so we really soaked it down.

Some of what you see under the car is not grease and dirt but factory applied undercoating. You can tell the difference because the undercoating is rock hard, we have no intention of removing it.

Easy Off!

This is the underside of the front suspension. It cleaned up great.

Little more than a scuffing should be necessary to paint these items.

The original color of the car was white and we even got down to the original paint on the uni-body frame. They must have painted this area black when the car was repainted red.

The differential cleaned up real well but we will go back over it with a second coat of oven cleaner.

Can you believe how well this cleaned up?

Remember, this is pressure wash, oven cleaner and NO steam or degreaser.

Ok, we are going back with the remaining one half can of cleaner on each side for one more application to hit a couple of heavy grease spots that didn’t come completely clean in one application. We used a total of 3 cans of oven cleaner up to this point. Although this was not a scientific test we could not notice any difference between the two products. My recommendation; skip the automotive store products; go to the grocery store and buy the cheapest heavy duty oven and leave the Easy Off on the shelf. There is no guarantee you will have the same results but we are going to try this on some more cars real soon!