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Removing carbon deposits from engine components

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UK Pete:
Does anyone know what safely dissolves carbon from pistons and valves,? i have googled it and it seems like there is nothing

hairygit:
Caustic soda will, but it also dissolves aluminium, so do not even think of trying it! I'm afraid a small scraper (an old feeler gauge works well) is usually the best bet, get the worst of it off, then use a polish such as solvol to remove the last traces and leave a nice shiny finish that carbon won't stick to so easily in the future. Make sure you remove all trace of the solvol, it is abrasive and you don't want even tiny particles of it inside your rebuild :'(

UK Pete:
Yes i was hoping there is some sort of safe to use stuff but it seems not, what i wanted to do was get the valve stems and pistons totally carbon free, i dont want to scratch the valve stems up incase there is some sort of stellite coating or something similar, i suppose i could use the caustic soda on the valves and do the pistons manualy with scrapers, soda blasting is an option but the expense puts me off
Pete

steff750:
 :o don't use caustic soda on valves either don't forget the head is alloy aswell ;) hairy git is right there is nothing wrong with a bit of elbow grease so get scraping ,but if your as lazy as me  8) get a wire brush and a drill no problem it will even put a bit of a shine on things for you

hairygit:
Certainly wouldn't use a wire brush, and definitely not on a drill :( A wire brush is far too aggressive on alloys such as pistons or cylinder heads :o Back in the days of iron heads and pistons a wire brush was perfect, but it will gouge alloy really badly, manually scraping it off is the safest way ;D Probably not what you need with your arm recovering Pete, but safer. How is the arm doing?

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