Cleaning carbon from combustion chambers?

Ok, question of the morning that I'm sure will turn into a debate around here... :whistle:

As much as I like the steam bath solution, not sure about soaking them in the sink due to the following....

Unless your planning on removing & replacing the valves, guides, seals and for this discussion SPRING... isn't this going to inject possible rust factoring on the non stainless components?

Old Man Rock wrote:

Ok, question of the morning that I'm sure will turn into a debate around here... :whistle:

As much as I like the steam bath solution, not sure about soaking them in the sink due to the following....

Unless your planning on removing & replacing the valves, guides, seals and for this discussion SPRING... isn't this going to inject possible rust factoring on the non stainless components?

+1 since the valves were not removed I definitely see a problem once the water gets into the valve springs, Iron valve guides and all those steel parts in that area. I hope that it is planed to remove all those components to clean out all that moisture. And since that now has to be done regardless, why not have done that first so you could remove all the crud that builds up on top of the valves? I am not disputing the rather ingenious idea of using the steam source, I am disputing however doing it to a head in the state of assembly it is in!?!?!? :ohmy: Corrosion has just been introduced into areas where it should never had been. I used a pressure washer on my head and it worked beautifully at the 1600Psi of pressure, but my head was totally disassembled.

Yes, of course I removed the valves after this step, then scrubbed the head some more with SOS pads, then (gently) chucked my valves in the drill press and cleaned them up.





I soaked all the valve springs, retainers, and split keepers in hot, soapy water, rinsed them thoroughly, then stored them in a plastic Folger's can, saturated with WD40.

Then came the port & polish:





The whole story is here: Freshening Up .

While I got okay results from the steam blaster, I've since gotten into soda blasting.













For smaller stuff like fasteners, I got a vibratory tumbler.