Cleaning intake ports with head on?

Hey, everyone. So I wound up figuring out that my misfire was caused by a cracked head after I fed an endoscope into cylinder 3 and spotted this. Once I saw the crack I ordered a reman head, and started stripping everything down. Since I have things apart I have been cleaning some components with wire brushes.

I have cleaned the valve covers, throttle body, and intake manifold. I would really like to clean the carbon out of the driver's side head (the one staying on the truck), since I have access to it, but wanted to know if that was a safe idea. I figured I could run something like Seafoam after it is all together, but that I could clean it much better with a Dremel and wire brush now. My plan was that I would spin the cams until the intake valves were closed on each one and then clean them one by one and spray compressed air in them to clean them out when I am done.

Is this a safe thing to do, or is the risk of a carbon chunk getting into the cylinder not worth it?

 

Here are the ports in question. Also, is the coolant passage supposed to be THAT rusty? I was thinking about cleaning that out as best as I could from what I could reach as well.

Also, is the valley on top of the block between the heads supposed to be THAT rusty? I was thinking of cleaning that corrosion up with a wire brush too.

 

I cleaned mine in the head using Marvel Mystery Oil (MMO). BRB with some pictures.

 

Intake ports before.



Set the intake valves to the closed position and filled each port with Marvel Mystery Oil (MMO) then let it soak. I remember it was afternoon and overnight. MMO has a cleaning solvent that melts carbon.






I kept working at it until I got the intake ports all cleaned up.

 

Soaked the lower intake manifold in Berryman Chemtool Parts cleaner -- the stuff in the gallon can. Napa sells a similar type of carb cleaner in a gallon can. Then followed it up with brake parts cleaner. That will clean it up good.

 

Since I had some pitting on the head and intake around the coolant port, I used FelPro gaskets with the blue silicone seal. I've them before on this type of pitted surface with good results.

If the surface is too bad, it may need some additional coverage or treatment. Need @Speedytech7 to stop by with some liquid sealer he used with these situations.



I cleaned up the valley. There had been some coolant seepage into the valley from the steel gasket that broke down around the coolant ports. I think I caught it before it had gone on too long.

 

I have never seen coolant passages look so bad. Usually a tiny film of rust but that is all. Looks like your water pump is probably rusted away or headed that way which has led you to this repair.

In my opinion, the lifetime coolant should be changed with the timing belt project (180k miles.)

For cleaning the carbon deposits, I think @CS_AR has a good idea with closing the valves and soaking from the top.

I would highly recommend vacuuming out the cleaner from the top (with a vacuum pump, not a shop vac!!) to make sure none of that gets to the cylinder. I think a lot of scraping damage would be done to the cylinders on startup.

 

If MMO runs down into your cylinders, it will clean them too. Just be sure to turn over the engine a few times without spark plugs to work out any MMO before trying to start it. Change the oil to remove any MMO that runs into it through the cylinders.

 

I used MMO to clean up some pistons and sticky rings. Basically, I soaked the cylinder in MMO overnight. After it ran down past the rings into the oil pan. I had the oil pan open so it could run out.

There is a Saturn engine trick where people soak a cylinder overnight in MMO to free up carboned up rings. I tried it and it worked to clear up a problem when I had a cylinder with low compression due to a stuck ring.

After MMO cleaning, you can spray in an additional lubricant through the spark plug hole and spin the engine a few times without spark plugs to lubricate the cylinders before starting.

 

Good points. I wonder if the fins on the water pump are partially rusted off? I've seen pumps where the fins were completely gone from cooling system rust.

 

Good advice @CS_AR. I would feel comfortable with the additional advice to lubricate after using any carbon cleaner in a piston or on intake valves and then change the oil before running.

@ngansiklung keep us posted, with pictures, on your progress.

 

Something to think about.

The amount of rust you are showing is alarming.

The problem with all this rust is it is iron based and possibly parts of the water pump fins
are part of the coolant system now.

The big issue is that the heads are made of aluminum. Aluminum is soft, steel is hard.

So essentially what you have going on is a high pressure sanding situation to the heads.


The contaminated antifreeze with the iron material is actually sanding down the soft aluminum
metal adding more metal to the coolant.

When my head gasket went out I remember seeing a photo of a head that had completely worn the walls down to where they cracked because of contaminated antifreeze.

There is a possibility that both the heads have lost their strength because of the aluminum being worn down from the iron content in the antifreeze and the other
head will fail.

Because of this it’s pretty important to change and flush your system regularly.


That rust situation needs attention ASAP.

 

Your coolant passages look almost as bad as my heart arteries

 

This looks perfect! Thank you!

 

If I read this correctly you have V6 and you only replaced just one cyl head ????? . You should replace the other cyl head as you'll now have cyl imbalance . You're going to have higher compression on one side of the engine not the other

 

Yeah, I have my theories about what happened with the truck. The previous owner before me mentioned that it was sitting on a trailer for a few years, and I can tell someone has done the timing belt/water pump recently. I think what happened is that someone overheated it and then went in and tried to fix the cooling system - it even has a newer looking radiator in it. I am willing to belt/when they overheated it that the damage to the head was done. I live in Vegas so I was extremely surprised to find rust anywhere - let alone that much haha.

So what should I go about doing to clean up the coolant system? When I drained it, the coolant looked very healthy, no sign of rust discoloration or anything. Another reason I was so surprised when I got in there.

 

What do you suggest?

 

Why would I have an imbalance, and why would I replace a cylinder head with no issues? I just did a valve check before all this and that side was fully in spec. Most of the compression loss over time comes from rings wearing, so I am not sure where this imbalance would be introduced. I have seen many people just replace once side when it is faulty; there's even a video series on YouTube by WorseThanChiggers where he just replaces one on this very same engine.

 

Since you didn't indicate mileage on the motor , let's take for example 170k miles . Now installing new heads on a significantly older high mileage short block can cause the rings to fail . This will lead to the rings not sealing as well and causing blowby into the crankcase

This is not a myth and I've actually seen this happen many times