CowBoE

Here is my plan for intake valve and piston head carbon cleaning.
I welcome hearing your experiences on this.




1. Just took out all ㅅhe spark plugs and didn't install the new ones yet until I clean carbons off intake valves and piston heads.

2. Going to remove plenum and intake manifold.

3. Start with just one cylinder with closed valves. I'll rotate the crankshaft to ensure that valves are fully closed. I'll shine a flashlight through valve side,
and make sure that light doesn't make it to corresponding cylinder chamber. I guess there is always a chance that thick carbon coating could prevent complete valve closure and some cleaning solution could sip through to pistons.

4. Going to soak the valves with "BG Platinum Air Intake Combustion Chamber Cleaner" that YouTuber Car Wizard rated highly. I'll soak the valves just up to the point where the heavy carbon build up ends. I'll periodically check on the cylinder to see if any cleaning solution is leaking through.

5. I'll check on cleaning progress every couple of hours, until the solution literally soften the carbon to near liquid form. This is necessary, so that I can determine how long to soak the other valves without having to constantly check.

6. I bought a cleaning brush wire set with extension. So I'll use this softly and may also just try toothbrush as well. I have a small hand pump I can use to extract as much cleaning solution as I can after soaking, and then just try to wipe clean the remaining. If necessary, I may do final cleaning with carb or brake cleaner to get all tiny the debris wiped out.

7. Once the valves are cleaned, I'll soak the piston head with seafoam solution just enough to cover the piston top. I'm just not sure if the BG cleaning solution could be too harsh on pistons. I'll also monitor the time needed for carbon to become soft. I think the spark plug hole is big enough to get a long small brush onto the piston head, but just not sure how much scrubbing effect I can have. Once the cleaning is done as much as I can, I'll use a small hand pump to suck out as much liquid as possible. If necessary, I may use the air spray to blow the liquid out...carefully of course with surrounding area covered, including me. Not sure I want to do dry cranking of pistons. I can also let air dry or even try to blow hot air to speed the liquid drying process. I know I know, I'm not exactly sure what I'll do, but I'm thinking of all options to ensure that I don't hydrolock or leave some deposits in their that'll scratch the cylinder walls or damage the piston ring.

Not sure how, but I would like to apply just a tiny bit of oil around piston edges to complete the piston cleaning.

8. I'll repeat this valve + piston carbon cleaning one cylinder at a time.

9. Once done, I'll change oil.

I'll capture detail borescope view of before and after cleaning results.
As this is my first time doing such a deep cleaning, any cool tips are appreciated.