How to: Valve-stem carbon removal?

PLUMMEN wrote:

feel the little chunkshitting! :laugh:

OK, I give up. Is a chuckshitting something naughty, or is FEELING a little chuckshitting what's naughty???
Oh, wiredOOd, you bad boy!!!
:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

(Oops. I suppose this is "offtopic" and therefore inappropriate. Tsk, tsk.)
:huh:

i caught this topic to late.
seems like plummen beat me to it.
i have seen first hand what the water when running does.
anyone ever change a bad head gasket on a car?
that cylinder is clean as hell.
it basically steam cleans your engine from the inside.

i was going to offer another old trick that works for cars but will be hard to do on a bike.

when you hear a knock in an older car, warm it up then slowly pour a big cup of desiel fuel into the carb untill it stalls. then pour the rest in.
then let it sit overnight.
change the oil first thing then try to start it.
it will be real hard to start and it will smoke like a bastard, but after it clears out.
if the knock is still there, it's not a carbon knock.

glad to hear plummen helped you.

but the wire wheel is really the best way.
then you have to change your bad valve seals.
you should also check the guides.

dont thank me,we're all in this together!:laugh:

My advice is to pull the head, pull the valves, and clean them properly. Under that carbon, you'll likely find other deposits. My valves had a bunch of carbon, but also this stuff that was like ceramic...

Got a drill press? Here's what I did:

thats definately the way to go in a perfect world,but sometimes you have to make do till its practical to do a complete tear down.:laugh:

PLUMMEN wrote:

thats definately the way to go in a perfect world,but sometimes you have to make do till its practical to do a complete tear down.:laugh:

I wouldn't bother with it, I have yet to see any real evidence that spraying anything into the intake will clean carbon deposits off of the valves, and will do nothing to cure the root cause of these deposits. I tried the water trick and got steam out the tail pipe, tried Seafoam and got thick smoke. When I pulled the head apart I still had thick, nasty deposits in the combustion chambers and on all the valves.

If I understand correctly, the bike runs okay as it is. I'd say wait until the weather gets too cold to ride, then tear into the motor and do the job right.

ive used it to cleanout a lot of motors that have had lots of stop and go city miles on them over the years that never get taken out and run enough to clean them out,its not perfect just helps

I'm not interested in tearing down the head to manually clean the valves for three reasons 1.) I don't have the tools or time 2.) I don't have a lot of money to pay someone else do it 3.) I am happy with results obtained from Plummen's steam cleaning advice. Thanks everyone for contributing your expertise to my dilemma-case solved!

Haha, hard to argue with that.

onanysunday wrote:

I'm not interested in tearing down the head to manually clean the valves for three reasons 1.) I don't have the tools or time 2.) I don't have a lot of money to pay someone else do it 3.) I am happy with results obtained from Plummen's steam cleaning advice. Thanks everyone for contributing your expertise to my dilemma-case solved!

OK, but just in case you're looking for another alternative...
1. remove the exhaust system
2. Remove spark plugs, and put corks in the plug holes of #1 and #4.
3. rotate the engine to TDC. This will put #1 and #4 at the top of the stroke. One of them will be at the end of compression and ready for ignition. That will be the cylinder which popped out the cork. this means that both the intake and exhaust valves are closed. This is good.
4. Grab your sandblaster and point the nozzle into the exhaust port of this cylinder. Sandblast the valve and port until a) all the carbon is removed, or b) the port is filled with ssand.
5. Replace spark plugs. Do NOT replace exhaust, as the sand might harm your mufflers!
6. Start the engine and rev it to redline for 5 minutes. This will safely expell all the sand in the port.
7. Repeat steps 2-6 for the other three cylinders.
Good luck!







The author of this post accepts no responsibility for the usefulness of his advice. In fact, you'd be a damned fool to do this. But, what the hey.
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