Valve cover cleaning question

what abrasive media did you use?

 

Roloc/Scothbrite 3” pads the brown then the green ones. The casting imperfections I used a sanding disk on here and there. Also bought a more handy than I would’ve believed Nylon wheel a Walmart for the tight corners. Chucked up to Dotco and it proved itself worthy!

 

Aluminum Oxide

 

would soda have the same effect?

its a little less abrasive i think??

 

This is not what you use soda media for.

 

i have a 40 pound bag of armex soda, what can i use it for?
it was 50
thanks

 

A buddy of mine had a extra set of valve covers he hot tanked for me and then I went over with a wire wheel on a drill motor to get the scale off of them. I cleaned out the pcv port on the passenger side and the vent hose port on the drivers side with carburetor cleaner and super clean concentrate at full strength and got out all kinds of sludge. I let everything dry out and hit it with some VHT wrinkle paint. and replaced all the hardware putting them back on. It took about a week to get everything clean and preped since this was an extra set of covers. All is good now except all the stuff I took off to get to the covers is now covering everything back up. Oh well...

 

To speed things up, I have used a 3M Paint & Varnish remover pad to clean up aluminum oxidization on valve covers and intakes. It all depends on the surface and how far you want to take it.




This particular VC worked out using a combination of scotch brite and steel wool. I did this one 6-7 years ago. Good products to clear coat aluminum have come along in recent years that will prevent oxidization from returning.



For the Tacoma, the VCs were powder coated in red. Then I polished the intake and throttle body.



The intake manifold was cleaned and coated with POR-15 Glisten PC.



This product seems to be working well for the upper and lower intake manifolds. It is a thick product. For the throttle body, I needed to use a lighter product. Duplicolor clear gloss wheel coat worked well for that application.

 

I wish I had thought of cleaning those out now that I’ve painted one of them... what did you do? Did ya just spray the carb cleaner down the PCV and vent hole port??? Or was there more you did? Thanks!

Oh and be careful using steel wire wheels on aluminum. It causes a dissimilar metals issue with microscopic pieces of the steel embedded in the Aluminum. Paint will keep this from going nuclear on ya right away but it’ll be the cause when it finally does. I worked for Boeing but now work elsewhere in aircraft... BIG No No on flying machines it seems!!!
Oh and media blasting where the material is reused will do this too. Pieces of microscopic metal shot into a different type of metal. Paint does slow this down but is something to keep in mind especially on polished or left bare items.
Lastly I’m thinking of stencil spraying a radioactive symbol on my passenger side cover.
Oh by the way those red 1st generation valve covers look sweet... I should’ve gone with that color.

 

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, I initially blasted the ports with brake clean but I could still see residue in the ports then I switched to Super Clean and used it full strength, I filled the ports up, plugged them off and let it sit for a couple of hours. I think I did it 3 or 4 times until it was clear. There are baffles on the inside of the cover that are riveted on and you could take the baffles out and clean the ports out that way but you have to re attach the baffles. Since I had a spare set of covers, I took my time. i hope that helps.

 

What’s super clean and where do you buy it? Thanks!

 

https://superclean.com/products/
Here is the link, you can get at O'reillys, Auto Zone and pretty much any auto parts stores.