Tag engine fogging

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. If you’ve got an engine that you’re going to have stored for a long time, such as this 351 Windsor that I’ve got here behind me, then one of the things that you need to worry about is the top end getting moisture inside and causing rust, corrosion, or potentially even seizure of the engine.

One of the best ways to prevent that is called fogging the engine, and that’s what we’re going to talk about here today on this Bullnose Garage quick tip. Fogging your engine is a very simple procedure that simply involves taking some oil, typically it’s called fogging oil, and coating the top end components to make sure that water doesn’t get in there and touch those metal parts and cause rust, corrosion, and maybe even seizing of the engine.

If you have a carbureted engine that runs, fogging it is actually really simple. All you’ve got to do is start the engine up, take off the air cleaner, spray some of this down inside for 10 to 20 seconds, or until you see smoke start to come out the exhaust. That’s actually where the term fogging the engine came from, is the smoke that comes out of the exhaust when you do it this way, and that’s going to let you know that this stuff has gone through the entire engine, it’s starting to burn off, and you can shut the engine down at that point so you don’t burn all this off, and you’re pretty much done at that point.

You may want to go ahead and take out the spark plugs and spray some of this down into the spark plug holes for two or three seconds per cylinder, and then at that point you should be good to go.

If you’ve got an engine that’s not running or is fuel injected, then you can’t fog the engine this way. Of course, if it’s not running, you can’t do it that way because it’s not running. If it’s fuel injected, you shouldn’t fog it that way because this stuff can foul up the injectors or cause some sensor issues. So if you have an engine that’s in either one of those situations, the way you’ve got to do it is manually, and I’m going to show you how to do that.

The first thing you’re going to want to do is go and take out all of your spark plugs. So once all the spark plugs are out, then you can go cylinder by cylinder and spray a shot of fogging oil into each cylinder for about three or four seconds.

Now that we’ve taken all the spark plugs out and I’ve sprayed fogging oil down all the cylinders, if I had access to the intake, I’d probably go ahead and spray some down to the intake for two or three seconds to get that part good and coated, and I’d do the same thing for the exhaust if I had access to the exhaust ports. Now, I don’t have access to either one of those in this engine. I’m certainly not going to be taking off the exhaust manifolds or the intake out here, certainly not this evening anyway, so we’re not going to worry about that. The important point is to get this stuff down into the cylinders.

Once you’ve got everything fogged up, you’re going to want to go ahead and turn the engine over manually a few times with a ratchet or a breaker bar to get that stuff in there really circulated around into the pistons, piston rings, the cylinder walls, make sure it’s good and coated. Now, in a Windsor 351, it’s going to be a 15/16 socket, but it could be different depending on your engine. Now, I’m just using a regular ratchet because this engine turns over real easy.

So is fogging your engine really worth the time and trouble to do it? I’ve heard both sides. I’ve heard some folks say that unless the engine is going to sit for years and years and years, it’s really kind of a waste of time. They’ve never seen an engine be rusted out or seized just over a couple of seasons. And other folks say that it’s so easy and simple and cheap to do, why would you not do it? It’s just cheap insurance. Now, I gotta tell you, I’m all for cheap insurance.

Now down here in the southwest, it’s probably not that important because it doesn’t get that humid down here, although during the fall and the spring, there are some pretty big temperature gradients that can cause condensation. But it still wouldn’t be nearly as important as it would be in a more humid area like the coast or down in the south, southeast of the country. The bottom line is that fogging your engine is easy, quick, and cheap, and I am all for easy, quick, and cheap ways to sleep better at night.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, and we’ll see you next time.