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How to Clean Piston Crowns in the Block

2K views 1 reply 2 participants last post by  seamus2154 
#1 · (Edited)
As many of you may or may not know, I'm in the processes of doing a valve job and replacing one of my pistons. Specifically the #7 as this piston, from what I have heard on the forum, is the one that usually has problems.

Sure enough a chunk came out of my piston and now it needs to be replaced. I got lucky in that the cylinder wall is not damaged. I will hone out the wall and replace the piston. In the mean time while I'm figuring out how to open the bottom end to pop the piston out. I decided to clean the piston crowns so they will be ready for their clean heads.

I tried several different things to get the carbon build up off of the Piston Crowns and the only thing I found that worked very well was this:

This stuff really breaks down the carbon, however there is a lot of elbow grease involved. To make it easier I used a couple of simple tools.

Spray bottle so you can pin point the chemical. Also, it cuts down on waist.

This is really designed to pop off auto carpet buttons but works great as a scraper and will not scratch your crowns or the very delicate aluminum block. Get it at Harbor Freight as a set. It's cheap!

So here we go, this is what my crowns looked like before I started to clean.

This is after one Led Zeppelin Song on the radio.

This is after a Doobie Brothers song.

This is after a commercial radio break.

Here's where I got after a Gerry Rafferty song, Baker Street was the song to be exact.

The last bit of carbon was the hardest but here's what it looked like after a Rolling Stones song.

Finally after a Boston song I was finished.

So I'm all done with the even numbered side of the engine, it's nice and clean.

The last thing I did before I called it quits for the day was to turn the crank several time to get as much crud out of the cylinder walls as possible. This took some time but after a while no more crud was visible when turning the crank over. Lastly I took some motor oil and coated the cylinder walls and crowns. It will be a while before I get the heads back on and I don't want that raw steel rusting.

Hope this helps someone out. More to come when I pull the oil pan and get into the bottom end of the engine.

P.S. Listening to the radio really helps the time go by.

Cheers,

David P
 
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