[Ayedum]

Hello everyone, I am doing a ton of work on my 2009 335i and walnut blasting was on the to-do list. I first was taking off the valve cover however and had some trouble getting it off so I stupidly decided to come back to it later.

I went onto walnut blast the first port and made it beautifully shiny, I take out the paper towel stuffed in the second port and lo and behold there’s already walnuts in there. The ports were so gunky and stuffed I didn’t realize there was an opening on the top of them going to what seems to be the pcv system on the valve cover.



Now since the valve cover wasn’t even sealed the walnuts shot up through that hole and got all under my intake bearing ledge and a bit into the cylinder from the valves that were opened.

I can clean out the few bit of walnuts that fell through into the cylinder using the spark plug hole. I know I’m probably going to need a new valve cover also as I’d imagine the walnut shells are all lodged and stuffed into the pcv system there, but the real concern is getting all the shells off the head. Im thinking of just air blasting it all to try to knock it free but I also feel like I could make a bigger mess that way. Does anyone have any suggestions or tips on how to possibly go about this?

[JuniorB]

Although mine wasn’t in the car, I done mine on an engine stand. I see now how this creates a mess real quick, I actually closed off my ports for a cc later on. When I did mine, my vc was also off, and the plugs were out. I blew everything out after seeing what a messs the shells make. From what I’ve read, it’s common for this, most don’t take the vc off, so it’s expected. It’s meant to burn off, but I’d blow out as much as possible. The motor I’m doing has 60k on it, when I pulled the no.1 plug, it was stuffed with burnt shells, definitely blow it all out, no harm in doing it.

[Ayedum]

Originally Posted by JuniorB

Although mine wasn’t in the car, I done mine on an engine stand. I see now how this creates a mess real quick, I actually closed off my ports for a cc later on. When I did mine, my vc was also off, and the plugs were out. I blew everything out after seeing what a messs the shells make. From what I’ve read, it’s common for this, most don’t take the vc off, so it’s expected. It’s meant to burn off, but I’d blow out as much as possible. The motor I’m doing has 60k on it, when I pulled the no.1 plug, it was stuffed with burnt shells, definitely blow it all out, no harm in doing it.

Alright nice, sounds good thanks for the reassurance. Just seeing walnut shells all over my engine really scared me a bit but im gonna go outside today and try to blast all the shells away.