A Honda Ridgeline came into the shop just to get the battery replaced. As I pulled it into my bay, I could smell some kind of fluid from under the hood. When I opened the hood, I quickly found the source of the smell.

It turns out the customer thought it would be a good idea to spray everything in the engine bay with used oil to prevent rust. There are a few problems with this, one being that the heat from the engine makes it stink. Additionally, if any drips on the exhaust, it will create smoke. If you wanted to try to prevent rust in your engine bay, use an actual rustproofing product, and try to spray it only on the metal parts. A lot of parts in the engine bay aren’t even metal, yet on this car they’re also covered in oil, like the fuse box, air filter, battery, and washer fluid reservoir. I can’t think of a time, even on 25 year old cars, that I’ve seen any of the metal structure of the engine bay significantly rusty, so this isn’t even really worth doing.

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-Dan