[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.

[Eracer76]

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the car DEFINITELY runs better now! The throttle is more responsive and overall the car just runs smoother and seems to pull harder

[Elliott@DetailAddict]

Come to the Bay Area, CA and do mine? Looks great!

[marv85]

Good job man! I'm looking to have mine cleaned as well... taking it to the dealership though

[LateralG]

wow, nice!
how long did it take you to do this?
pix of the sandblaster pls.

[secretsquirrel]

That looks really good. A pic of the sandblaster and your setup would be a benefit to a lot of owners here.

[creaminz]

Im amazed...my cleaning job is nowhere close to yours. Maybe I should take it apart again and re do it

[Jeff@TopGearSolutions]

Nice! I wonder how bad mine are considering I've had a OCC since about 1K miles and running methanol since about 5K miles.

[KyLu II]

You missed a spot...

[Rotorocious]

how long did it take to do each port?

[rooringhusky]

One word: WOW!

You really thought this out and did a great job on the cleaning..I think this is the best after pic from a DIYer I've seen on the forum...Much respect!!

Now if only you could clean mine...LOL

[Zebra99]

Nice job dude. Sounds like some sweat equity went into that, but I'm sure it was well worth it.

Can you bring that to Toronto? I can set up a group buy and make you some serious cash lol!

[Mahhvinn]

Originally Posted by Grant@DetailAddict

Come to the Bay Area, CA and do mine? Looks great!

Seriously!

[RevC]

just had the dealer do this for me...surpringly they did not charge me a penny. the car is night and day different, so much smoother, linear, and most def pulls harder. good work op!

[Bavarian13]

Quite a difference

[whoosh]

Originally Posted by LateralG

pix of the sandblaster pls.

+1. great job...

[Thumperx]

Eracer, nice friggin job Mon! You've inspire me to get my valves cleaned. I just need to pull the trigger.

Question about your sand blaster plate. You mentioned that you made to 2 holes on a plate you've made. The plate has one hole for the media to blast through and be collected by the vacuum cleaner and the other for the sand blaster's gun tip. Sounds like you were rotating the gun's tip in a "blind" manner in each port (sort of). Is this kind of correct? Or was the plate made of clear acrylic?

Also your 4,5 &6 intake valves ports are not as bad with carbon build up as others members had posted. Have you used any products to help mitigate the carbon build up?

Agree with other member, can you supply us a list of tools and products used to perform this valuable task.

Much thanks and great job!

[dzenno]

Originally Posted by Zebra99

Nice job dude. Sounds like some sweat equity went into that, but I'm sure it was well worth it.

Can you bring that to Toronto? I can set up a group buy and make you some serious cash lol!

Talk to Ivo @ Columbus Automotive ... he's done mine and a few other cars from members on this forum...if you search you'll find pics of how mine turned out

OP, great job there! Those were diiirrrrtyyy

[Eracer76]

Thanks everyone!!
It was quite the task doing the actual cleaning. But once I got the set up working properly, things went much faster, unfortunately I didnt get it figured out until the last two ports! lol.. So the whole job took me about 10 hours from turing the first wrench, to pulling the car out of the garage.

There were many reasons it took me so long to do the job. One reason was that the sandblaster gun kept clogging up on me, so I kept adjusting the tip in and out with no luck, it would spray for a couple seconds then clog... Then I eventually ended up breaking the ceramic tip by over tightening the set screw that holds it in the gun. So... I started rigging all different types of tips using misc crap in my garage, different hose barbs, deep sockets and so on... and nothing seemed to be working very good. Come to find out, I had too much precipitation in my air compressor and it was causing the walnut media to clog up in the gun. So I made a trip to Home Depot for a water/air separator and installed that in my air line... Now I got the walnuts flowing good! Actually too good! To the point it was filling up the ports before the vacuum could suck it out.... So off to the store I went for a bigger hose and I got some 1/2" ID instead of 3/8"... Then after modding my plate for the bigger hose, it seemed to be working good, but still spraying too much media, so I tried using some more different rigged "tips" and I ended up using a 1/4" drive 6mm deep socket stuck in the end of the gun and it works great now!

So, I know I spent about 4 hours messing with the set up and a couple trips to the store, to get it working effectively. And once I found the right combination of media flow via the tip size and the air pressure, and enough suction... things went much faster!

Overall, it was a good learning experience and I would do it again no problem, because I know I could do it in about 4 hours next time!



FYI, This is the sandblaster and walnut shells that I bought... even after the misc crap from Home Depot, I still spent less then $100 to do the job!
http://www.harborfreight.com/portabl...kit-37025.html



http://www.harborfreight.com/25-lbs-...dia-92150.html

[Eracer76]

Originally Posted by Thumperx

Eracer, nice friggin job Mon! You've inspire me to get my valves cleaned. I just need to pull the trigger.

Question about your sand blaster plate. You mentioned that you made to 2 holes on a plate you've made. The plate has one hole for the media to blast through and be collected by the vacuum cleaner and the other for the sand blaster's gun tip. Sounds like you were rotating the gun's tip in a "blind" manner in each port (sort of). Is this kind of correct? Or was the plate made of clear acrylic?

Also your 4,5 &6 intake valves ports are not as bad with carbon build up as others members had posted. Have you used any products to help mitigate the carbon build up?

Agree with other member, can you supply us a list of tools and products used to perform this valuable task.

Much thanks and great job!

Yep, my "plate" was actually just a piece of 1/2" MDF that I held by hand tight against the cylinder head
I drilled one tapered hole for the gun tip, so I could rotate the gun around blind, and one regular hole for the rubber hose to fit snuggly into the plate. The rubber hose ended up being 1/2" ID hose about 3 ft long and I just stuck it about 2 ft into my Dyson's vacuum hose. Then when the Dyson would fill up, which was about twice for each port, I just dumped it back into the walnut box and recycled it

[amclint]

+1 for improvising, I'm still not sure I want to do the clean-up myself but I like the budget sand blasting solution more than the soaking and scrubbing with car cleaner on and off for 8hrs.

[cleex024]

show us a picture of the plate you are talkin about with everything in place pllllllleeeeasssseeeeeeee lol

would be greatly appreciated.