Soap and water works. One thing that sucks is you'll never get all the salt out of the radiator fins. I wash mine and it looks good but when I take it out for a ride, the left over water blows out of the radiator and I get salt all over my clean bike

 

Next time spray water into the radiator fins from the back side of it with a medium pressure. It's easier to push it out the way it came in then wedging it in the fins further.

 

I'm a fan a the Dollar General, cheap-o "Orange Clean" in the spray bottle with a cheap crest battery-powered toothbrush. You can get it into just about all the engine crevices and just rinse it off...

 

Spray-Nine. This stuff is gods gift to man for cleaning basically everything. It also comes in a spray bottle. Squirt, wait, rinse. I get it at Canadian tire, but I would guess Home depot or somewhere of the sort might have it

 

why clean it? Just gets dirty again.

 

+1

Although I finally cleaned all of the dead bugs off mine from last year, I usually try to do that before storing it but winter snuck up on me FAST this year. It's by no means clean though, just not gross anymore.

 

Ok, so it's alright to hose off the engine? The wiring switches and harness plugs will be fine?

 

just don't shoot directly at plugs and wires, it's fine, I've used a pressure washer on my engine block before, with one of the softer tips that along with simple green worked really well...dirt bike guys do it all the time and it's fine