[Eracer76]

So I decided to take on the challenge of cleaning my valves on Sunday. I knew it wouldn't be a problem for me to pull the engine apart, as I've had plenty of experience working on vehicles before... and it was actually pretty easy. In about an hours time I had the car apart and was inspecting how dirty the valves really were....

So, here is what they looked like before cleaning...

Cylinder 1


Cylinder 2


Cylinder 3


Cylinder 4


Cylinder 5


Cylinder 6


So, I think they were pretty gummed up even though I have seen worse on this forum... but, I don't really know if my car has had this done before or not, because I just bought my car bone stock with 53k miles on it 3 months ago. I'm just wondering why cylinders 5 and 6 look different in color? And cylinder 1 appears to cleaner then all of them, like maybe the blow by oil doesn't reach cylinder 1 as good as it does the others?

Anyway, I was somewhat prepared of what to expect being the car has 56k on it, and had a good I idea of how I was going to clean them. I previously bought a portable sandblaster and a 25 LBS box of walnut shell media. I then custom fabbed a plate to cover the port I was working on to keep the media inside the port and not in my engine compartment or all over my garage... The plate has two holes in it, one is the perfect size of my blasting gun tip, and other one is the perfect size to stick a 1/2" ID rubber hose into it, which was attached to my vacuum.

After all said and done, here are some examples of what they all look like now after blasting them clean! BTW, these pics were taken before I finished wiping them clean.